Sean, Elizebeth, Ava & Audrey
On the 28th, Audrey turned 2 years old! Sadly, she and Ava were sick with colds. Audrey had a very hard time sleeping at night. Fortunately, she is doing much better now.
She got lots of presents for her birthday, including the piano we got for her. It’s a lot of fun:
She has lots of fun playing and she’s very good about sharing with Ava. Good little sister. 
Happy Birthday Audrey! Love you!
Ava is officially a speller! Last week she formed the word "rocket" all on her own. She can also read the word, that is she recognizes it and says it. She’s known her alphabet for a very long time and she memorizes books, but before now she couldn’t identify a word (aka read a word) nor has she been able to grab all the letters and put them in the correct order. If I may toot her horn, she is very advanced here. Most kids can start to do this in kindergarten, but it’s usually 1st grade where they really get going. Ava will be 4 in two months.
To further encourage this, I bought a bunch of alphabet foam letters for her to build words. She can also spell "bug" and seems to be doing well with "bee." And believe it or not she is trying hard to get "helicopter" down.
I would like to give some credit to the newer PBS show Word World that we just started watching. It got her excited about spelling and it does a fantastic job at teaching kids. I recommend it for your kid.
Being the artist that she is, it is only a matter of time before she starts getting comfortable enough with her pencil to write the words. Fun times!
Papa Sean.
If there is one thing that has been challenging as a parent, it’s teaching Ava how to use the potty and be excited about always using the potty. For those non-parents, a potty is a toilet. 
In April, Elizebeth and I had to sit down with Ava for 90 minutes sometimes encouraging her to go pee while sitting on the potty. The entire time she had to go, but she would hold it and plea to have a diaper. That was simply her comfort zone. Eventually she’d let it out and we’d have a mini parade of excitement full of "good job!" 90 minutes turned in to 60, then 30, etc. As of late she’ll ask to go to the potty a couple of times a day and almost always say yes when we ask her. Takes her about 2 seconds for her to go now. When she’s done she counts to 20 by herself to make sure she is done, cleans, washes her hands and gets a fresh diaper. Here are the rules which work for us and Ava. If she asks to go to the potty and goes, that’s 3 candy corn (the secret weapon). If she doesn’t go, it’s zero (this avoids fake outs for candy corn). If we ask her and she goes it’s 2 candy corn. If she goes and still has a fresh diaper its 4 candy corn.
There has been a lack of her telling us when she needs to go and she still feels comfortable going in her diaper. So today I had her put on her big girl panties. This worked pretty well. Over a 2 hour period she had to go 3 times. The first two times she asked to go urgently and succeeded in getting 4 candy corn each time. The third time she got distracted and started going in her panties… aka an accident. Fortunately, she stopped after she realized what was going on and ran to the bathroom and finished there.
A very successful potty day I thought. We are very proud of her and let her know continuously.
We are still trying to ease her into putting poo in the potty. Even with the promise of 10 candy corn she has yet to feel comfortable doing this. This is a very sensitive situation for her. Since birth she’s had poo problems. She’d go for days without pooing and then have a huge one. Even with lots of fibrous food and encouragement she holds it with all her might and after a few days we literally have to help her get the poo out. Think of the size of a pop can and shrink it ever so slightly. It’s a big poo even for adults. So the thought of going through that each time causes her to hold it. It’s wasn’t always that bad and she’d go through plenty of long periods with good poos, but when it go that bad we went to the doctors… again, to seek help for her digestion. Finally we get "Miralax." This stuff works! She now has normal sized poos regularly. Hallelujah! The doc says give her about 6 months with regular BM before she gets less sensitive with the subject. We’re patient!
Good job Ava!
PS If you the reader happen to be reading this about 15+ years in the future and are Ava’s boyfriend or husband don’t forget you had poopy diapers too! … oh yeah, if you hurt her remember that talk I gave you when we first met.
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