Now I am in my kampung Tuaran Labuaya. I have a cousin. His name is also Eric Ribuan and Eric noel is my name. He is 11 years old. I have my PS2 in the kampung. He doesn’t have a video game. His daddy doesn’t buy for him.

It’s been three weeks since I started teaching Joel how to potty. It’s not working well, to say the least.

For one thing, he doesn’t like his potty; maybe he thinks it’s a little too small for him. He is almost as big as Eric was when Eric was 2-1/2 years old, so it was easier for Eric to sit on the potty compared to Joel. Plus, I was still working and sent Eric to the day care center every weekday, so I suppose Eric also learned a thing or two about going to the potty while he was there. The other issue I had with the potty training is that Joel only knows how to communicate when he wants to poop. He doesn’t signal anything when it comes to him wanting to pee.

It’s only been three weeks, though. I suppose I need to show him the concept of using the potty first before teaching him how to poop in it. Right now, I’m demonstrating to him the use of the potty by throwing his poop into it, then taking him along to the toilet as I cleaned up his potty. That has only happened ten times in the last few weeks, because most of the time when Joel poops, his ah po (Chinese word for grandma) would always beat me to it and cleaned him up. I’ll have to wait until my husband’s parents return to their home before I can hope that Joel’s potty training can work as I planned.

A long time ago, I used to actively keep up with Eric’s developmental activities, noting down what month he started rolling, crawling, standing up, had his first tooth, etc. Although I pay attention to Joel’s development as well, I haven’t really been rushing to put things on paper, or blog them.

It’s good to note, anyways, that Joel has been reaching all his milestones like a text book, even his 13-to-18-month milestones. He doesn’t throw tantrums that much, as he’s been using the simple sign languages I’ve taught him whenever he’s hungry, sleepy, wanting to bathe, or even changing the channels and choosing the cartoons he wants to watch. Joel loves to say bye-bye and hi to his dad on his way to and from work. He’s also a real joker, who likes to entertain Eric and myself with his pretend falling down antics and turning around in a spot till he’s dizzy and then having a big laugh out of it.

I’m eagerly awaiting Joel to reach his next crucial milestone — learning to potty. I’m pretty anxious about this because I haven’t really taught him how to communicate with me whenever he wants to urinate; he only knows how to tell me when he poos. He’s almost a year and a half now, the same age as when I started potty training Eric, and he managed to go diaper-free after just 3 months. I don’t know how both of us did it, but I hope Joel and I get the same success because it does look like Joel doesn’t enjoy his potty that much.

once upon a time Joel still in mommy tummy. Suddenly joel give birth go out from mommy. Joel is so cute, so small. Hello my name is Eric. and thank you for blogging.

This is a post I made in the old blog on Tuesday, 13 February 2007 at 01:30 AM.

Joel went for his first follow-up vaccination last Saturday. At 2-months old, it does sound a little late for vaccination, but we decided to follow our PD’s recommendation that instead of having his Hep-B shot at 1 month old and T-Antigen + Hib at 2 months old, Joel will get all his shot at one time, thus saving on the doc’s fees. It’s great, of course, for those of us who know the high cost of caring for our babies during their first years.

It’s been two weeks since Joel started attending daycare at Sunshine Nursery Penampang, Eric’s alma mater. And just as I expected, he got a cold soon after. With so many kids around the nursery, it’s almost unavoidable. Nevertheless, through past experiences with then-little Eric, I knew just what to do. My husband was pretty concerned, though, so just to be safe, we mentioned about Joel’s cold to our PD, and he prescribed us a couple of medicine. I’ve learned throughout the years that Dony has very good instinct when it comes to our kids’ health, so I never took for granted whenever he thinks we should bring them to the doctor. Anyways, Joel checks out OK and his growth chart shows that he’s growing well, even better if I compared him to Eric when Eric was just 2 months old.