Our Max is 19 months old!

Our little wonder-boy is 19 months old today! He is great, one of his cute sayings right now is "high five!" and he does a high five. He continues with his 2-word combinations that we can understand and also strings lots of things together that we can't understand. He likes pointing out and saying body parts, such as eye, ear, knee, toe.




Aunt Bea, who just turned 80, spent a day with us. She is extremely bright and vigorous, but the boys wore her out by the end of the day. We are going to see her this weekend at her home in Calabasas for her birthday celebration



Max smashed one of his cute little toes (see the black toenail?) playing in a vacation villa we shared with Grandma and Grandpa Mann in Newport Beach over Labor Day weekend. That weekend, we actually put Max on the toilet when we saw he was pooping and we made it in time and he successfully pooped on the toilet! But when we saw him preparing to poop again later and asked if he wanted to use the potty, he calmly and firmly said "no." He does acknowledge when he goes, though, so I'm thinking of trying to potty train him over winter break - we'll see!


Miles is doing well. He has made a great adjustment to his demanding new school schedule. He is enjoying it and has made a lot of new friends (although none so good as his buddies from pre-K last year, at least not yet). We still get together with his pre-K school friends for playdates and they really enjoy it. Miles had some initial behavioral issues at school which the teacher successfully managed with a sticker chart and point reward system for the class. She has told us that Miles is having issues doing the work, particularly writing - and she believes it's a readiness issue. He is on the younger side, the standards in his school are high, and he has long been resistant to writing and other academic tasks - either due to lack of maturational readiness or motivation, or some combination, we're not sure. So we'll have to see how he comes along with that. We would rather see him have his work differentiated (below the standards of the other kids) and repeat kindergarten than have him pushed to do things that he's not developmentally ready for, because the continual experience of failure could have some long-term negative consequences. Then again, he may catch up. It's been confusing to hear from people that he is "gifted" with advanced abilities in certain areas, then seemingly delayed in other areas. With a discrepancy like that, it was difficult to know what the optimal learning situation is for him, such as whether to start him in school this year or wait a year and what kind of setting is best. We're thankful that he has a wonderful, experienced teacher who is working well with him and keeping us informed of his progress.