Am I Blue? Yes I'm Blue!

"Maybe if I sit here real still he won't notice..."


"Honest, Dad, I'm sorry... and I'll never do it again!"


"The puppy-dog-eyes work everytime."

This is what 1 1/2 year-olds like to do with markers. Although this was not his first encounter with a marker, it is the most extensive encounter to date. Notice he particularly likes biting the marker end. (not to mention pencil erasers as well).

Potty trained at 16 months!

Well, we are trying... and we are making great progress!

Here is Isaiah on his "Baby Bjorn" potty chair. We gave it to him just after his first birthday and he like to sit on it (and stand on it, and climb on it, and stick his feet in it). At about 14 months, last October, we started putting him on the potty whenever we changed him, and almost immediately, he took to peeing in it. Of course we also sait the word "potty" and made the sign for bathroom whenever we took him. Since Christmas time, he will sign 'potty' and/or nod 'yes' when we ask him if he has to go!

I think Isaiah thinks that if he sits down, he HAS to do something because when he sits, he grunts like John McEnroe. He also loves to watch the big toilet flush, and almost falls in staring, pointing, and laughing with excitement each time the toilet is flushed.

One day Isaiah had gone, and I emptied and wiped out the bowl and flushed it for him, and he wanted to sit some more. Not wanting to stand in the way of progress, I left him there and went back to work in the other room. A few minutes later I hear water pouring into the toilet and rush to see what he could be up to. He had gone potty again, and had dumped it in the toilet (dripping only a little) and was in the process of wiping out the bowl with a LOT of paper (another thing he thoroughly enjoys!)

Baby Berger pictures andThe little turtle

Here are the first pictures of the newest member of our family. We were fortunate to get a bunch of them, but these are two of the best, so I had to scan them in to share with you all. The kid was an active little squirt, wiggling arms all over the place! Isaiah was active, too, but jumped and kicked around during the ultra sound.

[click picture to view larger image]

David, William and Jacqie were very excited to see the baby!
David asked the doctor, "Can we see the inside of the birth canal with that thing?" [the ultra-sound] He's alway trying to figure things out, and not much gets by him. By the way, the answer was 'No.'

[click picture to view larger image]

Apparently, in the ultra-sound world, there is a commonly accepted term known as "The Little Turtle." —Well, here it is!
You figure it out!

When to worry:

It hasn't taken us long to learn that noise is a good thing. And with 4 kids running around, it gets quite noisy around here. But you know that you don't have to worry as long as there is noise: you can hear where they are, what they are doing, and who is trying to boss who around.

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Silence can be scary! Anything could be (and probably is) happening when it gets quiet.

We had been keeping them on the shelf, but company was coming over, and Christin put it down in the lower cupboard. The next day while Isaiah played in the kitchen and Christin was off doing house work in the other room, it got eerily quiet in the kitchen, and, well, you can figure out the rest. Isaiah figured out how to open the rubbermaid container of flour and had a blast playing and rolling in it.


He was not happy to have to be done with this!


This summer we are hoping to enter Isaiah in The Food Network's
Iron Chef America: Preschool Challenge.