Pennington 2 1/2

It has been a while since I did an update on Pennington so here it is.

Pennington is a talking machine now. He honestly speaks in full sentences all the time, sometimes as many as 10 words in one sentence. He doesn't necessarily respond very well when I ask him what he did at school but he will go on and on about things he sees when we are driving and how he wants us to play sports with him.

Pennington is definitely not the world’s best eater. He does eat but we are sort of stuck with him only wanting to eat his favorite foods which include all fruits, yogurt, bread, fries, chicken nuggets, sticky rice, cheese, Z-bars, soymilk, ect. I know he eats more things at school but that is pretty much all he will eat for us at home. I guess really he isn't a bad eater it is just that his sister excels in this area since she will honestly eat anything.

Pennington can totally dress himself pretty much 95% of the time. He honestly never wants us to help him. He also wants to pick out his clothes which almost always consist of a sports shirt of some sort.

Pennington can now ride a bike with training wheels. In fact this last week he took off riding to the park down the street from our house and was about half way there before I realized how far away he was, scary yet exciting at the same time. Not sure I know very many other 2 1/2 year olds that can ride their bikes as well as he can.

Pennington is starting to be interested in reading. I can get him to read most of the pages in the book "Blue Hat, Green Hat" to Piper. When I say read I mean he can look at the pictures and tell the story. He talks a lot about numbers and letters. He can pretty much count to 10 by himself. Sometimes when he counts it goes like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 8, 9, 10. For some reason he always forgets 7. I think he knows some letters but probably less than 5. Johnny and I have talked about how we need to get his name up on the wall in his room so he can start learning the 10 letters in his first name.

We are still working on the potty training. I think if Johnny or I have 5 solid days to focus on this we can probably get him trained. He goes at home at least once a day and sometimes up to 3 or 4 times a day. He is totally potty trained at school except for a few poop accidents. Basically he has the idea of how to do it we just haven't taken the diapers away completely so he can't go in them if he needs to.

His new favorite books and videos are of the Berenstain Bears. I just love the fact he likes the Berenstain Bears since they are exactly like our family of four (Mama, Papa, Sister and Brother Bear).

Besides the food and potty training challenges we have with Pennington we are still working on getting him to give up the pacifier. Overall, Pennington is a wonderful little 2 1/2 year old full of energy and willingness to learn.