A more mellow May...

After the busy start to the month, it has been nice to enjoy some more "typical" Rosenau family days...

That means playing outside in the yard or at the park before dinner. Golf, of course, is a huge pastime and this spring Collin has discovered the joys of teeing off (photo, right) with a tee stolen from Daddy's golf bag and the driver he got from Grandma Nola. Of course we also find time for passing the hockey puck and sometimes the occasional "game" of soccer!

What is not quite so "typical" is that our days are now also focusing on potty training. That's right, we have entered the era of "big boy underwear!"

Collin has been super with potty training so far. Like all of Collin's "developmental milestones," it has not been anything we have pushed and he has come to it on his own terms which seems to have helped.

He has always been open to "potty time"(photo left) and that started quite young as more of a fun thing than a "training exercise". The photo here was taken shortly after Easter 2008 while he was having some potty time with the potty themed book (complete with flushing sounds) that he got from Grandma Nola in his Easter basket. Not much focus on actually going potty at first, but he sure got a lot of reading done...

Shortly thereafter he conquered "poop" and we are very happy to say we have probably only changed about 5 total "dirty" diapers over the last year. I don't recall specifics, but he was pretty safely trained in this area well before he was 2 years old. Now months later, when it finally came time to move to "big boy underwear," we have only needed to work with "pee".

He has been very excited about the whole process so far. We did wait to move into the big boy underwear phase until after the trip to Duluth and the wedding to be sure we did not overwhelm him with too many new things at once. So far that seems to have worked. Although he still wears Pull-Ups at night to protect from accidents while he is asleep, this entire week he has worn only big boy underwear with very few accidents...some days none at all! Although we know to expect some set-backs as he truly masters the potty, we are very proud and excited for our little man!