Still Potty Training

Five months ago I decided it was time to start potty training.  Now we are altho he point where he can wear underwear all day and stay dry...as long as Mom remembers to take him to the bathroom.  He has only asked twice to go on his own, but overall I am very pleased with the progress we have made.  He is also usually dry in the morning, so maybe soon I will be brave enough to let him sleep in underwear.  The biggest thing of all...Last night James POOPED ON THE TOILET for the first time ever.  It was very forced, and believe me he was doing everything he could to hold it in, but with Mom and Dad holding you on the toilet there is not much you can do.  We of course made a HUGE deal out of it and took him to DQ for ice cream, even though it was bed time. I think by the time he went to bed he was feeling very proud of himself.  So if he keeps up the same pattern we should be completely out of diapers by the time the baby is born!  That would be a big deal, we would only have 2 and possibly 1 in diapers then!

Another thing I have discovered in the past few weeks is James is a perfectionist.  I have always known that he is the kind of kid that doesn't like to practice doing things, he just likes doing it.  Sitting up, crawling, walking he wouldn't do any of these things until he could do them perfectly.  Now it is writing and drawing.  He didn't used to care about the lines, but now that he knows what they are for he cares.  I first noticed this when we were making Valentines for school.  I would write his name on them and then have them trace it with a marker.  The first letter he "messed up" (I thought it looked great) and got so upset he couldn't work on it anymore.  Another day we were working on this picture:

He cut out the colored strips, cut them into pieces and stuck them to the rainbow.  He was sitting and engaged for probably 30 minutes.  Then it came time to color the sun.  He noticed he was getting gout of the lines and flipped out.  He was crying and upset for probably 30 minutes and nothing we tried would distract him from it.  I tried to explain that he was doing a very good job and that it just took time to get it exactly right, but he wouldn't listen.

Some progress he has made the past few weeks:
We were at Pizza Hut for lunch one day and he was ready to go.  Instead of crying, walking away or throwing a tantrum he calmly said "I'm done."
Today I was trying to give him a Kiwi he was interested in and he said, "I don't like kiwi"