More milestones and Arboretum

Louis FINALLY learned how to roll over from back to front, just in time for his seven month birthday. For a long time he could roll on his side, but then he seemed to think that was good enough, and just sat there grinning (he's not very ambitious). Now that he's doing that (with some agility, I must say), and sitting up, and pivoting on his stomach he's ready to crawl! Onward!



Speaking of milestones, its occurred to me that Miss Rosemary has been through an enormous amount of change and growth since we got to Chicago just a few months ago. She started sleeping in a twin bed (from the first night we got here!), no mimis (we went cold turkey, and didn't talk about it, just didn't use one one night in early April and that was fine with her. For some reason in the last 2 weeks she's started asking for them again -- I think its because she's had a hard time falling asleep lately), and now: POTTY TRAINING! She resisted the first few days when I announced we were going to start using the potty (we've had the potty and sat on the potty on occasion since February or something -- but we never pushed it). We just stayed home, went pantsless and sat on the potty about every 1/2 hour (thanks to Jill's suggestion). It was very messy and at first it seemed like she didn't care at all about the accidents, but it only took her about four or five days to get the hang of it -- a week total before we were ready to go out of the house without a diaper. Our first trip diaperless was to "school" and she thought it was pretty exciting. We are now going one week wearing only panties except nap (and only sometimes at nap) and at night. She has had very minimal accidents -- the few that I can think of have been our fault for not getting to the potty fast enough after she told us. She even told us she had to go on our long (7 hour) drive back to Chicago from Michigan -- no accidents in the car even though the poor thing got carsick (? I'm not sure because now Louis seems sick?) and threw up along the way. WOW!! I was expecting potty training to be worse than diapers but I guess it was the right time + I had a great teacher (thanks Jill).

Jill's advice got me thinking about some of the advice I've received the past few years that was really paradigm-shifting amazing:

• Dolly suggested that I cover Rosemary's windows with aluminum foil (we're subletting so, no investment in curtains) to make her sleep longer in the morning. BRILLIANT!
• Heather suggested that I bring Rosemary's lunch with us when I leave the house so I didn't have to rush back home to feed her (she is a slooow eater, and eating on the go means that I don't have to patiently wait for her to eat for at least an hour three times a day)
• Sandy told me that I absolutely had to stop feeding Rosemary at night at six months and she was totally right. I CONSTANTLY use her sleep and schedule advice -- she is a brilliant super-mom and I credit her for any sleep I've got the past few years
  

Louis, Rosemary and I went to the Morton Arboretum the other day as James prepared for his last big obligation for the school year (a talk at U Chicago). It had an incredible children's garden, with a wading pond (full of tadpoles -- Rosemary thought it was pretty cool that we could pick them up), a hedge maze, rope bridges (she redeemed herself from the trauma at Lincoln Park zoo climbing structure the other daywhere she got 'stuck' from being terrorized), and water pumps.















Rosemary has a new Skuut bike. She is still learning how to balance and is, as ever, cautious, but so far its a hit. It takes about 2x longer than walking with her (which is already fairly slow) but its a good lesson in patience. She's very determined -- she insisted on riding it all the way to the restaurant the other day, so I sent James ahead to order the food since we were going to take a looong time getting there.