I've realized lately that Ashton is not going to be my most difficult child. Sure he is very over dramatic and thinks his life is over on a daily basis. Especially if someone sits in the bus seat he was assigned to (two hour meltdown over that one), but he is a complete stickler for the rules which makes him very trustworthy. Talan on the other hand is very manipulative and sneaky making him, if not physically, then mentally the death of me. His favorite thing is to argue just to argue. Even if it is something he wants to do, or have for lunch, he will argue about it because he can.

Since Brad has been home we've been working really hard to get Talan potty trained. I know he can do it....he's just stubborn, and realizes it drives me insane. I've been trying to be patient, but it is difficult when we are 6 months past my cut off of 2 years old.

Back to the arguing. Tal and I were at Toys R Us yesterday. We happened to walk past an end cap with a bunch of frogs. Talan was really interested in them and demanded he hold one. I explained to him that it was a potty and what he was supposed to do with it.

His response, "Oh, ok"

He assured me that if I bought him this frog potty he would in fact us it for its intended purpose. My mistake was that I believed him, but being desperate we loaded the potty into the cart. Talan talked all the way home about his new frog potty and became really excited about it....until it was time to use it and he discovered he had to take off his beloved diaper to actually sit on the potty. After a few minutes of me trying to coax him into using the potty only to hear him shout back, "NO!" I finally said,

"Talan you HAVE to start going potty on your frog potty"

He looked at me straight in the eye and said,

"You HAVE take my totty dack tore!" (you have to take my potty back to the store.)


My conclusion after all this is Talan is going to grow up to be a 45 year old man who is not potty trained and he will never get married and move out because who is going to marry someone who feels no need to stop wearing diapers.

Chef Talan

Over the cold winter months, which kept us indoors way too much, we learned something new about Talan. He loves to help cook. It doesn't matter what we're making, he just wants to be a part of it. I love it because when he is sitting on the kitchen counter he's not available to torment his brother, or color on the toilet with a highlighter (which doesn't actually come off very well go figure).

Today the chef insisted on brownies...not going to argue that one:




Note to self: Do not leave brownie batter unattended next to the 2 year old while he is licking the spoon. He decided he needed more and dug right in. Talk about double dipping.