Overview of the past week, detailed posts below from 8/28-9/6, Including new pictures & a new video

This week Acer has learned what a Blue Jay sounds like (and he imitates it vocally) what cicadas (cadas to him) sound like and is mastering using a glass (or would that be a plastic?) . We've been learning nature sounds as we do our Follow Mama walk in the morning or evening. See Tuesday 9/4 for some pictures of a typical walk. Notice there's not much distance between shots. He tends to go in bits and spurts, definitely more of the hare personality than the tortoise. He also puts so much energy into his running that he gets tired quickly. I'm trying to teach him to use big steps because he goes much faster using big steps than when he's actually running.
Acer also conquered taking off his shirt. We had a hard time explaining this to him in or getting a method he has the fine motor skills to reproduce. We tried two or three different methods because Bill & I use different methods to take off our shirts. We actually had to sit and brain storm about this. What finally worked was for him to hold one sleeve & then pull his arm through then he can pull it over his head and off. He actually came up with this method on his own, our idea was to have him pull both arms through, but he found that he didn't need to. Now I'm just never sure how much clothing will be actually on the boy when he wakes up from his nap.
We've tried turning Acer aound on the potty so that we can just climb up on a stool and go potty himself. In theory, this would stop his climbing up onto the seat of the toilet and balancing there. In reality, this just means that if he scoots himself far enough back, he can dip his butte into the water, which he does again and again if not stopped.

He now climbs up onto the stool and pulls his pants down, but turns himself around so he's facing the toilet tank again and then turns himself back around. This is not a smooth process and any parent would be driven to hiccups by the many times during the process that he could take a header. So we're back to the old method until I can figure out something else. Anyone with boys have any suggestions?

Bill - Also note that some of the new posts are re-dated, so they appear in the correct date/time order, so there are new posts going back to 8/28. Just so you all know...... B