See ya later Pha-Pha

I almost feel like I may be jinxing us with this post -- but John is now about a week with no Pha-Pha !! (aka his pacifier, as affectionately noted two blogs down).

He still asks for it at bedtime on some nights, but we don't give it to him. He asks, we say "No, we don't have any pha-phas" and he's ok with that as long as he has a bottle nearby. Fingers crossed !!!!

Lil'daddy's Southern Vocabulary

YES pronounced Yeah-es
HEAD pronounced Heay-ad
BELL pronounced Bay-el
THERE pronounced Thay-er

(Hard a's for the soft e sound now that I think of it...)

There are a host of others as well. It's too cute when he talks this way, but I can't figure out where this comes from. While it may be true that I may not always remember to distinctly annunciate all the letters in my words, I haven't started throwing extra syllables in! :) I have an aunt who moved down to Louisianna that has developed a twang and a different way of pronounciation. I think she'd really get a kick out of it!

Pha-Pha / No pha-pha

John calls his pacifer a pha-pha (the "ph" being the "f" sound, I sort of made up the spelling). He loves his pha-pha dearly and we've been trying to wean him off it for about a month now. Well, my wonderful DH has been, I'm a bit weaker in this department. But John is doing great, he only gets his pha-pha at nap or bed time and even then, not all the time. We really are making good strides.

Tonight, I gave John his bath as usual and brought him to the bed for diaper / jammies / snuggles / prayers. This is our usual routine, I do bath, Vito gets bottle and all three of us meet up for prayers. Bottle usually arrives at the same time that John lands in our bed.

Tonight, bottle was a few minutes behind schedule (traffic jam in the kitchen perhaps?). As I was trying to distract John as we waited, he looked up at me and asked for pha-pha. "Daddy will bring bottle in one minute" was my reply. He looked intently in my eyes and his eyes welled up with tears -- "no pha, no pha" was all he said, as he had a terrified look. I felt like he was telling me he knew his pha-pha days were limited and he was going to lose it forever. Luckily Vito made it in with the bottle, John calmed down and we started our prayers. The moment had passed and John didn't ask for pha-pha again, and went to bed without it. But I remember that look in his eyes, my little boy breaking my heart...

Much credit to "Big Daddy", he's much stronger with this weaning than I am.

Short & sweet (just like my little guy...)

Just a quick John update / proud mommy moment:

John can now sing his ABC's with about 95% accuracy. I'll hear him singing in his car seat as we drive or as he's laying in his crib. A "W" is "double-X" to him, but that's ok -- we're getting there!!

He counts most of his numbers up to 20.

He's starting to learn colors, and told me the other day that my blanket was brown (it was beige, yippee!!).

And he's really developing a love for cars and trucks. He and I went to the library yesterday and it hit me (like a truck)as I heard a fellow mom read a ballerina book to her daughter. The other mom was described toe-shoes and recitals as I was reading about bulldozers, dump trucks and diggers!!! Gotta love the little boys!!