One Hot Baby: What ya doin? (March 10-March 24)

I feel that soon I can start letting Cohen write his own blog because he has SO much to say these days. Our little broken record started saying "what ya doin" a few weeks ago, although in Cohenese it sounds more like "what n doon." Just this week he has become very concerned with mommy and daddy's whereabouts at all times and if one of us leave his sight it is "where mommy go" or "where daddy go" until we get back. Neither one of us have any excuse for ever running out of gas, because we can't pass a gas station without hearing "mommy get gas" or "daddy get gas." His grandma tries to keep him as clean as possible throughout the day so he is very aware of any areas with "muhee ottah" aka muddy water...you'd be suprised how many bodies of water are muddy these days!

He is all boy and loves to see a moto (motorcycle) or who-who (fourwheeler). Daddy has a long 45-minute ride to work in the morning since Cohen usually likes to point out every school bus and inform him that "keeds (kids) on bus."

After months of denying it, I finally accepted that Cohen was showing the signs that he was ready to be potty trained at 22 months old. While we are very far from being fully potty trained, we couldn't have asked for a better start since he has been happy to pee in his "pot-T" from day one with very little encouragement from mommy and daddy. We started out with a huge jar of animal crackers that he could have as a reward for using the potty, but after about a week he didn't even ask for those anymore....it's a good thing, too, since he only wanted the animal cracker kit-cats (cats) out of the jar and we would have run out of those really soon! A few weeks later and he only has about one accident a day when he "forgets" to go to the potty. We may cheat a little by letting him wear Pull-ups on the long rides to and from daddy's office every day, but maybe we'll work on that one when he turns 2! Going number 2 is a different story and he currently prefers to do that business either in the floor or just hold it until he's asleep at night!

Not afraid to use the big boy potty...as long as he has the appropriate reading material!

The first week of potty training required lots of indoor activities - first attempt at painting!

This is not the face of a painting fan!

But someone had to finish the work....

After a few weekends of hardcore potty training, we were all ready to get out of the house and Jeff's grandma's 92nd birthday party was the perfect reason! Jeff's aunts planned a luau party complete with leis, plastic flamingos, grass skirts, good food and ice cream sundaes. The evening before the party we took all of the great-grandkids to have a picture made for Granny B's birthday present. Since we decided this at the last minute, the photographer's only opening was at 7:00 on a Friday evening...right around Cohen's bedtime. I'm going to blame this scheduling conflict on Cohen's lack of cooperation for the pictures - he acted like he had never met his cousins before and stayed glued to my legs as tightly as possible! It took Jeff and I, along with his cousins, their wives and the photographer to get and keep Cohen in position so a picture could be snapped as quickly as possible. God bless that poor photographer for this work of art:

The gift was a success for great-grandma and all of the respective grandmas...altough the barefeet in the picture seemed to be a cause for concern! Here are some pictures from the party...