Here’s a funny little story, not about Tru, but about his cousin Benjamin. Since Benny has a new little sister, his mom and dad needed a little time alone with the baby. So we watched him for a few hours on Saturday. One thing we did was ride bikes to the park down the street. When we got there, Tru and Benny started playing on the equipment, along with a half dozen other kids. Pretty soon I see Benny push another kid over by a slide–typical boy stuff. The other kid kinda stopped and stared at Benjamin. Next thing I know, the kid’s dad is running over there saying “No, no, no, no…” I go over and ask Benjamin to apologize to the kid, which he does. Everything is better and the kids keep playing. I started talking with the other dad, who turns out to be a pretty cool guy. He tells me that his son (who is also 4, like Benjamin) has been taking karate lessons and is a yellow belt. He ran over to the slide yelling “no” because he was afraid his son was going to take down Benny! 🙂

Benny doesn’t know any karate, but if he did, I think it would be pretty funny to watch a couple of four year olds throwing down the full-on kung fu action at the top of a slide in a playground…

Yeah, he got his first second* one today. His Grandpa Jim (my dad) gave him a bike a couple of weeks ago. It’s real two-wheeler with training wheels. He just rips around on that thing, but the training wheels don’t let him counter-lean on his turns, so when he goes too fast (as he is wont to do), he tips. Today he was leaving the driveway and turning left to go to the park. Instead of riding across the driveway, at a low angle, he went straight to the curb then tried to do a 90&deg Tron-style left turn. He went right down. I was on his left side and he tipped to his right. I grabbed for an arm, but he was moving too fast. As he went down, he turned and faced his fate, the rocky driveway. His little face bounced off the rocks (our driveway is inexplicably unpaved) as he skidded to a stop on his stomach. I picked him right up and saw he’d bloodied his nose and put a goose-egg on his forehead, despite the helmet. He was crying, of course, so we went inside and cleaned up. Then I told him his favorite story (a few times) while he snuggled and pulled together the courage to jump back on the bike. Which he did about ten minutes later…no worries.

* Amy reminded me that Tru’s first bloody nose was at cousin Sicily’s first birthday party–it was a party of firsts!

Using his “grumpy face”, this is what Truman told Amy and me this morning. Can’t remember why we were laughing at him, but suffice it to say that we didn’t stop after he told us, “It’s not funny to laugh at your children.”

That’s the lighter side of Tru… The darker side is when Amy asked him to pick up some toys yesterday and he declined, calling her a “stupid girl.” That really wasn’t funny…

Since Tru is such a freak for Thomas the Tank Engine, we’re going to surprise him with a train ride in June. I just ran across the link today and it sounds like something he’ll really dig. We may take his cousin Benjamin along too, since Benny’s parents will have a brand new baby to deal with by then…

As long as I’m writing here, I guess I’ll post a little update about Tru’s doings. He’s just generally a happy boy. His grandpa Jim gave him a new bicycle–a real two wheeler with training wheels! The training wheels aren’t working very well, so I’m going to have to fix them today. Other than that, Tru loves the bike. Although, the other day he was having such a hard time going to bed that he lost bike privledges, train privy’s, and more. And got some spankings from his mama. I wasn’t home (thankfully), but it didn’t sound like much fun for either Tru or mama.

You’d think I’d have become attuned to Tru’s bodily functions by now. Guess not. Though he wears “big boy” underwear all day, we put him in “pull-ups” during naps and at night ’cause he tends to forget about holding it when he’s sleeping. Rarely poops, but regularly pees. So the other day, I was waking him up to get him dressed for the day. It’s easier to dress him when he’s either sill sleeping, or after he’s had something to eat. Since we were running a little late, I figured I didn’t have time to work through the eating business–he could gnaw on something in the car. So I started changing him. Took off his pajama bottoms and pull-up and put on his underwear. I turned around to get his shirt and when I turned back, the yellow stain was quickly spreading across his underwear and starting to roll down his leg onto the bed! So I picked him up off the bed and luckily he didn’t pee much. I think my picking him up stopped the flow. Anyway, he was pretty bummed that he had already peed in his underwear, and it ended up taking as long to get him dressed as if I had waited for him to eat breakfast. Lesson learned, I guess.

Tru’s pretty much fully potty trained now. He still wears a pull-up to bed, but that ends up being dry about half the time. He lets us know when he has to go to the bathroom by loudly proclaiming, “I HAVE TO PEE!” or “I HAVE TO POOP!” Doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing. When he feels it, he lets us know. We’ve only had one accident when he tried to wait too long before letting me know he had to pee. Tru sounded the alarm, “I HAVE TO PEE” and started running for the bathroom. He’s usually able to take care of business on his own but this time I heard him whimpering in the bathroom. By the time I got there, he was crying and had wet his “big boy” underwear and pants. Really bummed him out.

Today, he “HAD TO GO POOP!” and he let me know he had “bug bites” in his tummy, meaning his tummy felt weird. So we went in and sat him down. He dropped one and said he was done. He stood up for the wipe and said “I HAVE TO POOP AGAIN!” so back down he went–and dropped another one. He did this twice more (one was a false alarm) before finally being done. I guess the “bug bites” went away too, since he’s not talking about them anymore.

Tru’s been having a little trouble napping and going to bed since we moved. This evening I had to put him back in his room multiple times. I finally asked him if he knew what a spanking was. He said he did. I told him that if he got out of bed again, I would spank his bottom and I asked if he understood. He said he did. About four minutes later he got his spanking and he was real sad about it. Me too. The little stinker actually got out of bed again and earned a second spanking. This time I held him for a while and let him cry. He wanted me to go to sleep with him, so I laid down for a bit. After a while I told him that I had to go talk to mama and that I’d come back to check on him. This didn’t sit well with him. So I asked if he’d like to pray and ask Jesus to help him be good. He did and we did. Afterward, I told him that if he knows he’s going to be naughty, he can always say “Help me, Jesus” and He will. He repeated it for me and I went to talk to Amy. I went back in about five minutes later and asked how he was doing. He said “Good. I say “help me, Jesus” and he make me feel better.” He fell asleep a few minutes later.

Big day for Tru today. He went to daycare wearing underwear instead of a diaper. Jane-the-daycare-lady said he was ready for it since he always tells an adult whenever he needs to go poop or pee, so I guess the consequences will be hers to deal with if something goes wrong today… He’s got exactly three pairs of underwear–all Bob-The-Builder style, with either black, blue or green trim. He decided to go with the more formal black trim for the big debut.

Tru likes to sing “It’s A Small World”, but the way he sings “after all” sounds like “at the draw.” When we sing it back to him and say “at the draw,” he gets all uptight and says, “No, not ‘at the draw!’ It’s ‘at the draw!‘” Still sounds the same to us. 🙂

Now we’re finding ourselves saying “at the draw” to each other instead of “after all.” Today, Amy went outside in a hoodless jacket and turned right around and came back inside to change jackets saying, “Guess I needed a hood at the draw…”.

Tru’s growing like crazy. He’s got a whole drawer full of pants that are highwaters on him now. It’s kinda nice though, ’cause now he can start wearing a whole new set of clothes that have been languishing in the closet, waiting for him to get bigger. And now he is.

We still do the balancing trick, where he stands on one leg on my hand. But he’s really getting heavy! I can’t hold him up as long as I used to. He’s as casual about it as ever, though. We did the trick this evening at a Christmas lighting ceremony at GFU and Tru got a round of applause from a new legion of admiring fans. 🙂