Sullivan at a jam session with Daddy and Buford at Allen’s new home music studio. He sure does like the banjo!

Sullivan has now graduated to his new big boy car seat equipped with 2 cup & snack holders, lights and comfortable plush cushions that he can get into (and out of) on his own. What a big boy!

Captain Hook continues to be the character of choice around the house these days. Damon and I started a responsibility chart with Sullivan to work on some key discipline issues. This week he is working on No screaming and yelling at Mommy and Daddy and cleaning up his toys at night. So each day he does this he gets a magnet on his special chart board. And when we began this project we told Sullivan if he was real good and worked on his chart at the end of the week he would get a Captain Hook costume to wear for Halloween. Well he has done very well with the picking up of the toys each night but has fallen a few days short on the no screaming task. And Damon ran into some trouble ordering the costume online so he decided to send Sullivan a letter from Captain Hook explaining the delay and encouraging him to keep up the good work. So when Sullivan woke up from his nap today Damon asked him to go get the mail with him and inside the box was a special delivery envelop addressed to Sullivan with a hook on it. Sullivan was beside himself with excitement and ran into the houseand opened it up and saw a picture of Captain Hook and damon read the letter outloud and Sullivan was nearly in tears with excitement over this. Captain Hook said he would be sending Sullivan his hat and coat if he continued to be a good boy and that he would send messages about it’s arrival soon. Well, the whole night was just a grand celebration of this letter and talking and talking about all the things he was going to do with captain Hook. I had to go out to the grocery store for a short but and when I returned Damon was duct taping a giant cardboard Pirate ship together for the boys to continue their adventures in the back. It was indeed a fun night for all.

Sullivan is on day THREE of wearing big boy underpants. The other day Damon carefully explained to Sullivan his choices for underwear. He told Sullivan he could wear these diapers that babies wear or these underpants that big boys wear (pointing to a set of fun Disney character underwear). I was not in the room for this exchange but Damon said Sullivan appeared to understand the comparison for the first time and quickly pointed to the cotton underoos and put them on. He has literally been clean and dry ever since this exchange. The pants (which were a pair of Captain Hook underpants) and the talk with daddy seemed to be just the motivation that he needed to make this big step. Now he comes and tells us when he has to go to the bathroom and then puts his pants on right afterwards. We even had our first outing today to the store sans diaper and with only underpants. We went to Costco and had a soda and pizza and then he went to the big boy bathoom with daddy making the trip a big success. He was so proud of himself that when leaving he stopped and told the check out employee that “he had a soda and pizza and went to the big boy potty at Costco”.

Granddaddy Jerry got Sullivan a Captain Hook doll for Christmas but Sullivan found it last week and just had to open it early. He was staying with Grandmommy and Granddaddy and was told he had to wait until Mommy and Daddy came the next day to open it which apparently caused much frustration and emotion. By the time we got there he was about ready to burst with anticipation of opening of this doll.
Now the doll has become THE toy of the house with his own special carry case and has provides us with just the right threat to encourage good behavior. Sullivan has been very careful with him even as Hook gets into scrapes with Smee and Peter Pan.