Bullet Points for My Boys

With all of the hullabaloo surrounding the discovery of a baby girl on the way, I can't let the little men of the house go unnoticed!  Here's what has been going on with Ben and Joey!

Ben

• His first loose tooth is hangin' by a thread and will probably fall out any day now.  I told him the more he plays with it, the sooner it will fall out.  I warned him ahead of time that it might bleed a little bit, so hopefully he doesn't have a heart attack now if he sees blood. 
• He's a math superstar and is progressing quite well through addition.  He knows doubles (i.e. 9+9),  plus ones (i.e. 6+1), and plus zeros (i.e. 8+0), all from 0-9.  He hasn't officially started learning subtraction yet, but the math curriculum is introducing it in sneaky ways.  He's very good at telling me, based on the given word problem, if something is being added or taken away.  
• He read three Biscuit (easy reader) books to me last night with very little help! 
• He is now aware of the concept of  "breakfast in bed" after Andrew and the boys sweetly surprised me Saturday morning.  On Monday morning, around the time he usually wakes up, he let out a loud, random yell from his bedroom.  When I went down to check on him, he said "I want breakfast in bed!"  I convinced him that it's more fun to have it as a surprise, so I guess that means we will be surprising him with it soon.  :-)

Joey

• He was doing so well with tinkling on the potty, and then Joey caught some mild tummy bug that has given him some yucky #2s every day.  It's not full blown diarrhea or anything, but it's just frequent enough that it's much easier to keep him in a diaper/pull-up all day because we just don't know when the next incident will be (he is not #2 trained yet, making this difficult).  Needless to say, most of the pee-pee ends up in the pull-up.  We tried cutting out dairy to see if it helped, and it really didn't.  So once things return to normal, I'll have to get him back on the potty bandwagon once again.
• He reminds me of some of the stories I've been told about Andrew as a small child.  Little Andrew would sit and have full conversions with grown-ups on all sorts of topics.  I haven't seen Joey do that with other adults [yet] but I'm sure it's coming.  He tells me all kinds of stories in such a serious manner, and his big brown eyes get even bigger and he makes full eye contact until he's done talking.  He waits for responses and continues the talk.  
• I think he's trimming down his naps.  There are some days he just doesn't need them anymore, and that's ok.  He just goes to bed earlier to compensate.   
• Before he went down for his nap today, I asked him what he learned at Bible study this morning.  They are spending the semester learning about the story of Joseph.  I asked him if he learned about Joseph's coat today.  He said yes.  I asked him who gave Joseph the coat.  I expected him to say "His father" because Joe's got a good memory like that, but instead he said "the fireman."  Not sure where that came from!