Hodgepodge

• Winter has finally arrived.  We have a couple of inches of snow on the ground and it's colder than a witch's tit outside.  Of course, it showed up at exactly the right time to cock up my sister-in-law (and family)'s trip up here to visit this weekend so they had to cancel.  We were bummed.  Yet, later this week it's supposed to be in the 40's again.  This winter is bipolar.
• Liam is not tolerating his steroid treatment.  He was on it for 3 days and it screwed up his sleep and made him fidgety and jittery - so much so that his teacher noticed it at school.  It also gave him a wicked case of laryngitis. We talked to his doctor and she told us to take him off it for a week to determine how long it would take to get back to baseline and then call her back.  We call on Monday (tomorrow).  Frankly, I'm not sure she believed us that it was the medication making him crazy but since pulling him off it he's made a huge improvement in behavior and sleep so YES it was the steroids screwing him over.
• Of course, this means that I don't know what the hell is going to happen with his treatment from here.  The treatment is steroids.  Period.  What they're going to do with the information that he can't tolerate them? I can't predict.  The one piece of good news is that the blood work on food allergies all came back normal.  No food allergies.  Huzzah!
• Jamie is being introduced to the wonderful world of potty training.  He's been walking up to me, pointing at his diaper, and telling me "wet!" or "poopy!" as appropriate.  Sorry kid, if you can tell me what you did in there, you can do it in the potty instead of a diaper.  So far success is limited - he'll only pay attention if he's naked from the waist down.  Otherwise, there's pee in the undies.  We're working on it.  I'd love to see him trained (mostly) before his birthday but it took over a year to completely train Liam and I am unclear what will happen with Jamie.  I think at this point I need to be more consistent with him than I have been.  I'd forgotten how much I really dislike this stage but in the same breath I've been doing diapers non-stop for 7 years now and I am SICK TO DEATH OF DIAPERS. 
• In other Jamie news, his speech is making another leap.  We're getting longer phrases that are more intelligible.  The other day I got, "Brown bear, brown bear, what you see?"  That's probably the longest phrase I've gotten so far.  He's also started singing along with various things - as though he always knew the words but could never get them out fast enough to sing along before now.  So, progress is being made.
• Jamie is also FINALLY breaking his two year molars - 3 months before he turns three.  Of course, all four of them are pushing through at once making him extra special miserable.  Two of them have poked the points through, two are just painful lumps, and all of them have the large flat surface of the tooth to break through.  Teething and potty training and speech advancements - that's Jamie lately.
• As for the adults in the house - well, we just keep plugging.  We got an impromptu night out at Piper's Pub last week that was quite welcome.  Otherwise, it's life as normal.  Work, childcare, housework, dog care, etc etc etc.