As Little would say. He's decided that taking a break is the a good way to get out of doing what you don't want to. Only instead of taking a break, he takes a "broke." Too bad taking a "little broke" isn't exactly an option for me at the moment, no matter how much I want to avoid doing all the things on my list. It seems like everything is happening all at once around here. The holidays, Bryce's finals, moving, potty training, etc. All very exciting, but all very time consuming.
Little has been back and forth on the subject of potty training for a long time now. He'll be interested for a bit and then decides it isn't worth his time for a while. About a week ago, completely out of the blue he announced that he wanted to "peep." So, off he went to the potty.
Of course he decided to get excited about potty training right before we have to move, so amid all the boxes and craziness sits a little potty chair ready to be used at the drop of the hat. Now my life is completely absorbed. If we aren't sitting on the potty, we are talking about sitting on the potty. I finally got tired of watching the clock so closely and started setting an alarm to ask every 15 minutes or so if a potty break is necessary. I was a little afraid it was going to have a Pavlov's Dog effect, but so far so good.
Little is actually doing amazingly well. Don't get me wrong, we've had plenty of accidents in plenty of interesting places, but overall he is getting the hang of it quickly. Despite that, I have decided that this is officially the grossest part of parenting to date. Man alive! That is all I can say.
In other news, we're moving next week. We applied for a bigger apartment over the summer not thinking there was any way we'd get in, but as fate would have it we got a letter saying it was all a go. The only problem is that it happened to be right in the middle of Bryce's finals. They let us postpone until the day after he takes his last final, but still... Kind of crazy around these parts. We never have much luck moving. I'm pretty sure it has rained/snowed/hailed every single time, last time we even had a crazy heat wave and the air conditioning broke. Seriously, no luck. So, when we found out that we were moving on the 21st of December--the end of the world according to the Mayan calendar--we laughed pretty hard. Not exactly what I planned to do with the day the world is over, but hey, what are you going to do?

Little's latest strategy for avoiding getting in trouble for what he knows is not going to be mommy-approved: "Let me show you a game!" He'll use it to try to stand up in the tub, to draw on something he shouldn't, to jump off the table, etc. Strangely enough, I don't find his "games" quite as fun as he does.
The other tactic he uses is, "Do me a big favor?" which is usually followed by a request to get out of the current thing I'm forcing on him. Ex: "Mommy, do me a big favor? I can play with toys," or "Mommy, do me a big favor? I don't eat carrots." He hasn't quite caught on that it has yet to work for him.

We had an extra fun end of November because not only did we have Thanksgiving at my sisters house, but we also had Fakesgiving here with friends. Mostly both days were filled with lots of good food, family, and friends.

 We were a little afraid of being all turkeyed out after such a fantastic Fakesgiving not a week before actual turkey day, but we had turkey sandwiches for days afterward and still loved it, so all is well.
At my sisters house we played plenty of rounds of Nertz as well as some fantastic Great Dalmuti (if you haven't played/heard of the game you should go get it right away), hats included of course. There weren't enough hats for every for a bit, so we had to get creative, please note the giraffe that my sister is sporting.
All-in-all, it was a great Thanksgiving and we are so grateful to have good friends and family to share it.