Two Steps Forward...

I know it's nothing new, but every once in a while I have to say it: two year olds learn a LOT, all at once.  I don't think Asa has undergone such a radical, developmental growth spurt over the course of two months since he was a newborn.  Some recent examples:

He'll stop when I tell him to - particularly handy at the playground, or when tearing around our front yard.

On a related topic: he'll (mostly) stand still beside me when I ask it, so I can actually get things into or out of the car in a parking lot without having to actively restrain him.

He's a chatterbox - full sentences, made-up stories, memories of the day before... or the week before... or of a time that we didn't even realize he was paying attention!  (He still talks about his firetruck birthday cake.)

He can, and does, sing.  He knows all the words to quite a few songs, and has begun to correct us if we miss a word or skip a verse.

He recognizes people's emotional states.  He'll laugh along with us (or sometimes before us - he has a great sense of humor), and he'll get upset when he sees someone crying.  During his swim lesson today, a friend was overtired and very weepy, and didn't want to participate in the lesson.  Asa kept breaking away also, saying, "Asa go make Carter happy?  Carter okay?  Carter crying..."

And with all the recent posts mentioning swim lessons: yes, he can swim.  With a bubble, certainly, but he did a full lap of the pool today, grinning like nothing else.  He can go up a flight of stairs without using his hands for balance, for the most part.  He can walk on his tip-toes, he's becoming a very good climber, and he loves to jump.

All of that in the past two months.  That's a lot.

That last sentence has been my mantra this week.  Because it's quite true, with a toddler, that you take two steps forward and one step back.  I mean, heaven forbid we have progress without regression.

He's rediscovered the joy of the CD rack.  (I know.  Who has CDs anymore?  Not the point.)  This was behavior I hadn't seen in nearly a year - pulling every CD off the shelf just to hear them fall.  Lovely.

But the biggest, most unpleasant form of regression?  Pee.  Lots of pee.

Because he is (was?) potty trained.  To the point that he'd ask to use the potty every time.  He'd wake up in the night rather than wet his diaper. He could hold it for quite a while, if need be, until we found a toilet.  (His record was nearly 20 minutes in northern NJ, when there wasn't a safe place to pull over.)  He went from mid-August until the end of September without a real accident - the worst that would happen was that he'd pee over the top of his potty, which was totally not his fault.

Until recently.

The thing about regression, I'm coming to understand, is that it gets under one's skin far worse than newer bad behaviors.  Because I know quite well that Asa is capable of telling me when he has to pee.  I know that he knows not to knock all the CDs off the shelf.  And although I also know that he has actually, really, forgotten a lot of this in the course of processing a ton of new information daily, it's still hard not to be frustrated.

Which makes two of us, I think.

And someday, I know, when we take two steps forward and one step back, this potty-training thing will be so many steps behind us that it won't be affected.  There will be other things, but it won't involve changing every stitch of clothes on his little body multiple times a day.

Right now, though, it's time to bring down another load of laundry.