Second Kid Potty Training Day Two

Josiah and Potty Training:  Day one was such a huge success potty training Josiah.  He's much better at holding it than Maryn and has a bigger bladder, so it was just a lot less messy.  He was excited, cooperative and maybe a little overzealous.  John was home, which helped motivate him immensely I believe.  Today has not been as much of a success. Actually it hasn't involved a single "success" and has been rather exhausting.  I'm taking a break by 1.) blogging and 2.) bleaching our kitchen.  If our bathroom can't be clean, at least our kitchen will be.  The top of our fridge was dis.gust.ing.  I know for a fact I cleaned it a month ago but yuck, yuck.  How the heck does it get like that in a matter of four weeks?

Maryn has been such a great help and encourager!

Maryn and Charlotte Mason:  I am reading a book called "When Children Love to Learn."  There is so much truth in this book.  I am learning a ton about myself, education, God and my relationship with him.  I'm learning a little bit about why I have such a works-righteousness mentality, and I'm learning why FlyLady has been so successful for me (it's about learning good habits, not completing a to-do list or getting a reward).  I've learned that I really have to work on 1.)  Being sweet to my kids and 2.)  Not trying to manipulate them with my looks, my sarcasm or whatever.  I'll be officially homeschooling in just about a year and a half (that's when we will have to register with the state), so I gotta get mySELF into these routines and habits if I expect the same from my kids.

We were outside and Maryn said, "Mom look!  I wonder why the ground is all cracked?"  I looked and it was clear that after the rain we had the other night, the dirt was then drying in the sunshine and cracking.  Yay!  I was so excited she was making these observations in nature (Shutup!  I know I'm a dork:))!  But instead of a big lecture I just asked her why she thought it might be cracking, and was it wet or dry?  She said it was wet but it was drying in the sun.  I stopped myself from going into a big "lecture."  I'm so glad I did, because instead of listening to me ramble, she continued to venture around the yard looking for cracks.  She ended up seeing a place where a groundhog had made tunnels and she and a friend had a little adventure looking at things on the ground.  The Charlotte Mason method is a lot about not spoon-feeding and lecturing our kids, but in exploring the world for themselves and making more of their own connections, doing their own research, asking questions, etc.

Owen and Milestones:  Owen has been hitting a lot of milestones lately.  It's even more exciting with the third baby when they get new toofers, learn to sit up, wave, clap, etc.  It seems not long ago Maryn learned to do these things and this bittersweet reminder of how quickly they grow has been making John and I hold on to her a little tighter.

On Christmas Eve, Owen learned how to clap.  He did it for a few days but seems to have forgotten about it.  But he has been waving consistently and I swear it's the cutest thing I have ever seen.  lol okay, I say that about everything, I know.

He is getting interested in crawling and pulling up on things but HAS NOT done either yet (thank God...just kidding...sort of...).  He's not totally back to himself since our illness.  He had a terrible ear infection and is on antibiotics now.  He's feeling so much better but I think the antibiotics make him feel yucky.

Sleeping:  The kids have been sleeping better.  We had a great night last night.  And by "great" I mean, I woke up with Owen to nurse at 12:30, 3:30 (and changed his poopy diaper!), and 6:30.  Josiah was up at 6 and I made him go back to bed.  But after I got Owen back down, everyone slept past 7:30!  Meaning...wait for it....I TOOK A SHOWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I also read my Bible!!!!!  And I made the bed, got dressed, and had a cup of coffee with my handsome manly man!

Family Picture :)

Maryn learning to twirl her spaghetti

Shootin hoops!  He's such an all-star.

Spaghetti Face

We have been playing pirates all day.  Here's Maryn with her scary pirate flag.  Arrgghh!

a little photo update

Our camera card is all filled up, so I've just been taking pictures with my phone.  But it's such a pain to load them onto the computer.  I really can't neglect my children that much.  But today I am...sigh.  

Maryn inherited Gabbi's loft.  She's not sleeping up there for another year or so though!  But it makes a fun clubhouse for now.

Josiah doesn't quite share the same passion for reading that Maryn does, even when she tries to force him to sit.  :)

Loving the outdoors!

This is Josiah's favorite little girl.  I don't know what it is about her, but he just adores her.  Well, we all do.  She and her sister and brother are all super sweet.

The story behind this picture...we were reading about Daniel obviously, so we made this lion today.  And look, Maryn has finally figured out how to do patterns.  Anyway, she wanted very badly to put bows in his hair.  lol...

At the Powells' house the other night for dinner, playing with Julia (6 months old).

I should give you all a potty training update.  For my own record, too.  We have had a real trip with potty training. Maryn was peeing in the potty so well, with zero accidents for about two or three weeks.  But all her poops were either in a pull-up or her undies.  Ah!  So I was very patient about it for those two or three weeks.  I didn't want her to get freaked out or scared of poop, so I just said that's okay, we'll try again next time, etc.  But one day I burst--we were running an errand and she pooped in her undies out in public--and I told her, hello, poop is kind of yucky and no, we don't want it in our undies.  

So...we buckled down on her.  We took away some privileges, including television and desserts.  She wasn't allowed to watch television (her beloved Blue's Clues, ah!) or eat desserts for two days.  And I stocked our freezer with ice cream sandwiches, frozen lemonades, and cookies and cream ice cream (with cones too!) and told her those treats and Blue's Clues are for big kids (preschoolers) and she couldn't have them till she started pooping in the potty.  AND we got her NEW princess undies, which are pretty much the same that she had before, but they were super special.  So, about one day of that and she started pooping on the potty. So there you have it, rewards didn't work well, but withholding them sure did.  

We are no longer doing stickers and a treat for peeing in the potty, but she is still getting rewarded with a Blue's Clues and a treat for pooping.  She likes to sit on the potty now without her special little seat on top, which is actually very nice and makes it easier when we're in public.  And she's been doing great in public!  

I'm so proud of our big girl.  She is truly a gift.  :)

Cowboy Day

We are at the end of a grocery week.  A glance at our pantry (who am I kidding?), or I mean, our two little cupboards, told me that choices were slim tonight.  I had some black beans.  We always have black beans thanks to WIC.  I had some baked beans, courtesy of our neighborhood Food Line (food pantry, which I volunteer for...well, I'm kind of paid to do it, etc.), and a pound of beef I accidentally told John to get last week. And of course we had some bbq sauce because who doesn't have three or four bottles of bbq sauce almost empty in their fridge?  Now I'd heard a lot about Cowboy Beans, and always thought about making them, but who wants to use one of two meat nights per week on beans?  It seems like a waste.  Well, tonight was the perfect opportunity.

Knowing Maryn wouldn't be thrilled with this meal plan (she loves beans but doesn't like barbecue sauce), I decided to call today Cowboy Day and got her all pumped up for our Cowboy Beans and Cowboy Cornbread (aka, cornbread that actually doesn't come from a box!).  So we wore our cowboy hats all day, spoke like cowboys, played "outlaw," danced around to some cowboy songs which I'd had from my teaching days, and decorated our lovely rocking horse Maryn calls "TuTu."

Maryn always wants to be the bad guy when we play games like "Outlaw," but she doesn't want to be locked up in jail or put into the stocks, of course.  Which I find absolutely shocking.  LOL

Some days she is just unbearable.  Today was awful, yesterday was great.  She had three pee accidents in her room today.  She hasn't had a pee accident in probably a week or two.  And this time they were all in her room, so it was very tricky to find all the places where she might have peed. I had to wash all her blankets and pillows and of course she freaked out about me putting her pillow into the washer.  Oh my word.  And she really doesn't care that she peed on her books, her kitty cat, and her floor.  She just danced around, naked, "La la la, I'm a cowboy!  Look Mommy!  I peed!  I peed on my pillow!  I peed on my kitty!"  She might as well have said, "La la la, Mommy!  You are one step closer to the final phase of my plan to destroy you!"  And she didn't eat her cowboy beans.  She had a cold hot dog instead.

Josiah is my cuddle bug, and thank God for him.  I love my kiddos both the same but I praise the Lord for his sweet little smiles that remind me all kids have tough phases and I'll get through this phase with Maryn.  And it'll be on to something new and different (maybe worse) and I'll ache for these times when her cute naked bum pops around the house like a little white dandelion seed.

Heaven help me, she says the funniest and cutest things all day long.  My favorite yesterday was when we were reading the story in Daniel, when the hand is writing on the wall.  The picture is pretty creepy.  I mean, there's a hand without a body attached to it, writing something in Hebrew on the wall.  Scary.  But she just looked at it very nonchalantly and quipped, "Oh, we have that on our computer, Mommy."

And so we do.  Sometimes our mouse does look like a hand on the computer, especially on her games at Starfall.com.  Sheesh.

As for pictures, I posted some great ones on Facebook.  I'm still having trouble posting pictures to my blog.  Sorry :)

Potty Training

I forgot to blog about potty training.

I wish the kids in the hall way would shut up.

Okay.

So, here's how it started.

We had our trip to Minnesota.  We were very busy there, and Maryn poops three times a day.  She was getting terrible rashes because we were unable to keep up with her poops.  So I kept telling her, "We gotta get rid of these diapers.  You have to start going to the potty because poop in your dipey is giving you rashes."  So seriously the next day after we got home, she wanted to the diapers off and the undies on.  So we started.

The first day we had zero successes.  Three poops, lots of pees, zero successes.

The second day we had two successes (both pees).  Three poops in the undies, lots of pees in the undies.

The third day we had only two pee accidents!  And I think she pooped in her diaper at nap time and bed time.  I don't really remember.

Anyway, we have now gone something like 7 days without any pee accidents, but mostly all her poops are in her undies or in a diaper or pull up at nap time or in the morning.  Yesterday I was desperate to get her to poop in the potty and kept her from taking quiet time (although she usually does make it through nap time in her undies just fine) and told her she could have a frozen lemonade if she pooped in the potty.  And she did!  She has pooped in the potty now twice, or maybe three times.  She's gotten ice cream sandwiches or frozen lemonades for pooping in the potty.  She's also gotten a Rapunzel dress for filling up her first sticker chart, and a hula hoop for filling up her second.  Her third sticker chart is for a new set of beads.

She also gets two mini M&Ms every time she pees or at least tries on the potty.  But we went one day giving her a whole BAG of snacks for every pee (2 animal crackers, 3 pretzels, and some raisins).  We have been really inconsistent, as in, we didn't have a plan and just made it all up as we went.  And took advice from about a hundred people and just kind of did whatever they suggested here and there.

Right now Maryn is awake after her nap, still in a Pull Up.  I know she probably pooped and peed in it.  She would not go in the potty before her nap.  I know it was because she thought I'd let her skip her nap till she pooped or peed, but that's all right.  I'm pretty she's got it, and I seriously can't believe how far she's come.  I can't believe she holds her pee like she does.  And goes all on her own!

There's a lot of things I want to remember for next time.  I'm glad we had the potty seat that goes on the big potty.  We also have a little potty, and that was useful too.  And the stool to go by the big potty, which I think helped her poop.  Or putting her feet on my knees while I sat on the tub.

Poop in the undies hasn't been too bad.  She knows right away and it bothers her immensely so she waddles over to me and tells me, and we just take them off in the tub, rinse them out in the potty, say bye to the poopy, and get cleaned up with the wipes.  She hates wipes (she associates them with diaper rash I think) so she gets it now--that pooping right in the potty is much easier and cleaner.  Then I bleach out the tub and throw the undies in the washer, where I have water ready with detergent to soak them.  I'm doing a ton of laundry these days.

I'm not sure why she doesn't want to poop in the potty except that she says "It's scary," but I think it feels weird to be sitting down with her feet not on the ground.  She is used to pooping standing up.  So Dr. Sears says use a little potty or put a stool under their feet.  For some reason she prefers putting her feet on my knees while I sit across from her on the tub.  I don't know why.

I'm not sure what we will do about church tomorrow.  I think we're going to put her in a pull up and offer her a great, great prize if she poops and pees at church or makes it through her Sunday School class with zero accidents.  I don't think we'll talk John into lunch at McDonald's or Moe's or whatever, but we shall see!

Her teachers at church are fantastic but with it being summer, she may have different teachers.  Plus I know how kids are when they are playing and with a bunch of friends.  We had so many accidents in Cubbies!  Parents swear their kids are potty trained but then they come to Cubbies and pee all over the place.  But our church has great little potty seats just like ours and little potty chairs, too.  I really, really hope she tries!

I knew she was ready, by the way, because she likes to be called a big girl now.  A few months ago, she said, "No, I don't want to be big.  I'm a baby."  And she does NOT want to have diapers on any more.  She hates them.  And she really doesn't like to be wet.  Yay.

Way to go, Maryn.  Mommy is so proud of you, big girl!

Funny Sayings with Maryn

Maryn is almost fully potty trained, even making it sometimes through her naps completely dry!  She also had her first potty in the a public place today.  She is so funny, though.  She sat on the side of the tub yesterday without a diaper or undies on and was SO interested in how it felt on her bottom.  So interested in fact, that she wanted to see what it felt like to sit on all sorts of things without undies on--the floor, the wall, etc.  (You really aren't ever going to visit us now, are you?)

So when John went to put her diaper on before bed last night, she said, clasping her diaper around her, "Ooooh this diaper makes my butt aaallll cozy!"

John and I have been cracking up so much lately because Maryn is really coming up with her own material, and it's just the funniest thing.  To us, anyway. 

Joy to My Heart

 

Have a baby?  Get this VTech Move and Crawl ball.  It's so much fun!

Spiderman!

 Josiah can hold a bottle all by himself.  Sort of.

Well, Christmas is over.  Maryn has been busy dancing to her silly music and playing Blokus (a game we've had for a few years).  She's also been watching Anastasia or Sleeping Beauty almost every day.  It's winter and we're pretty much stuck inside, so that's fine by me.  We loaned out all our Christmas movies.  Which was kind of a dumb thing to do, but oh well.  We can watch Frosty in March, right?

Maryn is also potty trained now.  What!?  I know.  It was sudden.  We don't trust her yet during naps, and certainly not during the night.  We haven't tried in public yet either.  I know, we are chicken.  I think we're still in shock.

We had such a precious moment tonight at bed time.  Maryn chose the three longest books possible for her bed time routine (Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?; If You Give a Pig a Pancake; One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish) and since I couldn't lay next to her because I had Josiah with me, I laid him beside her instead.  I read the books teacher style, with the books facing them (thank goodness I know the books by heart, lucky me!) and Josiah and Maryn both just laughed and laughed.  They kept looking at each other and giggling and Maryn kept kissing his head.  Josiah was just cracking up with uncontrollable laughter.  I hope I remember that moment forever.  It was one of the sweetest things I've ever experienced, and I hope it is the first of many moments of watching them love each other. 

Josiah has even started giving me hugs and kisses.  He "flirts" with me across the room.  Maryn is entering this odd phase where she is 25% baby, 50% little girl, 25% teenager.  It is very bittersweet for me.  Sometimes far more sweet than bitter, and um, sometimes far more bitter than sweet.  It is truly a blessing to have a baby right now for reasons hard to explain.  Josiah makes me appreciate even the difficult moments with both of them.  I know now, from experience, that each moment is short, each week goes quickly, and with each month that passes I forget what it was like to hold my babies when they were born.  When they were two months old.  Maryn's hands will soon lose their dimples.  Her legs are growing longer and more slender.  Josiah clings to me for now, but not forever. 

I might not be a miracle mommy, but being a mommy sure is a miracle. 

Potty Talk

"Mommy and Daddy help me...I go potty and I get candy.  It's EXCITING!"

-Maryn

John helped some friends move today, so while he was out we went to the park for a walk around the track, the playground and the library. Maryn was pretty whiny at the park and when I had to change her diaper, there was nowhere to change her. So I mastered two things today: changing a very bad poopy diaper on a child who is standing up in a very wet and dirty bathroom, and getting Maryn out of the car seat and out of the car one handed. I'm getting better at this motherhood thing.

Maryn was really worn out after an hour on the playground, so I figured we'd have a quick trip to the library to pick up the book I reserved and maybe stop for ice cream or a smoothie. But my one handed extraction got Maryn out of the car, but not my purse. Or my keys. So we were stuck at the library for an hour and a half. This is how it went:

I and the other library patrons were very grateful for Miss Emily, the children's librarian, who helped keep Maryn busy and occupied in her whiny moments. John came to our rescue a little after lunch time, with an entire Pizza Hut pizza in his hands. Our friends he was helping move had some pizza left over! So I didn't even have to make lunch. Maryn and I were so hungry we cried all the way home. Well, she cried while I explained, "We have to wait! We have to wait!"


What else have we been doing? This:

Maryn drug out her potty the other day all on her own and has decided to sit on it for 3 or more hours each day. She reads and watches cartoons. I feel a bit guilty about her sitting for so long each day. I've read almost the entire Bringing Up Boys book and other books and magazines. We've sung a million songs and played enough patty cake to have our arms fall off.

But if she wants to be potty trained before she's 2, I guess I will let her try. She is wearing her fairy underwear proudly and maybe we'll save some money on diapers.