Sully Does Fall

Sullivan and Gabe went for a walk last weekend around Lake Harriet. Well, it was really more of a 3-mile amble with stops to look at the ducks; pointing out and petting the various dogs; letting Sully out of the stroller to walk in the way of other walkers, joggers and strollers; and then making Sully a pile of leaves to jump in and throw around. Gabe got some super cute photos on his cell phone (yes, we need to get better about carrying around a camera with a charged battery and then actually getting it out to take pictures).

One the agenda for this weekend:

- Go to Shriner’s Circus to let Sullivan see real elephants
- Go to pumpkin patch to get into the Halloween spirit
- Buy Sully a Halloween costume of some sort (probably whatever is left on clearance at Target)

Sully is currently at home with Grandma Pipho as he has these two days off for school conferences. Gabe and I are going to Sully’s conference tonight at 5:30 PM. Will be interesting considering Sully is definitely reaching the terrible twos, as evidenced by the following:

Favorite Phrases
--"No!” (said while flinging his arm at you as if to hit you)
--"My do it!”
--“Daddy!”
(Sidenote: I am currently a second-class citizen at home. This has proven a nice thing as Sully has been sick and only wants Gabe to help him/rock him in the middle of the night; this sucks when I would just like a hug before the kid goes to bed.)

Fun New Behavior Issues
Has begun hitting his teachers and parents when he doesn’t get his way.

He stands and cries inconsolably when he doesn’t get his way or you don’t understand what he is asking. Most recent example was the “Great Breakfast Stand Off” yesterday morning. We made Sully a toaster waffle, but he then decided he wanted Oatscreme instead for breakfast. We asked him to eat one bite of waffle before he could have Oatscreme; he instead chose to cry and scream for 20 minutes. It’s a constant War of the Wills at our house. He’s a stubborn bugger.

This one is actually kind of fun – he thinks it’s hilarious to fall down. Whenever he has fallen, we’ve always said, “Oh, ka-boom!” or “Oh, you went boom!” Goal was to make it seem fun and not like a scary thing he needed to cry about. Well, mission accomplished.

Now he will just walk down the sidewalk and then all of a sudden turn himself into a Indian-style seated position and lay on the ground and say, “A-boom!” He did this repeatedly on another Lake Harriet walk all of us did on Sunday. Cute, but you seriously don’t get anywhere, and it’s really annoying to the people around you.

Hopefully he is nicer at school than at home. But he’s still cute, and he’s still our Sully.