Cringing

All parents have this same problem occasionally. It's when their children repeat something they've heard their parents say - in a public place, in front of everyone, LOUDLY.

My mom likes to tell me the story about when she realized she shouldn't tell me things. Apparently, when I entered the 2nd grade (or was it the 3rd grade?... could have been 1st grade, I suppose...) Anyway, when I came home from my first day of school that year and told her who my assigned teacher was, she was happy. And she told me why she was happy I'd been assigned to her class.

So, the next day when I got to school, I went and told the teacher, "My mom is happy that I got you for my teacher because you're a no-nonsense kind of teacher." *gasp!*

I have to laugh whenever I think of this. My mom was mortified by the teacher hearing this. I'm still not sure why. (but I love that she was - it's part of what makes my mom my mom) If I was that teacher, I would have been very glad to hear that my reputation was good. But anyway...

If I could only have such "horrible" moments. No, instead, here's what happens to us:

The other day, we all went to the grocery story. We went to the one that has those race car carts - where the kids get to drive the "car" that has the cart attached to the back of it.

I'm pretty sure this was a day when the boy had not taken a nap and when he hasn't taken a nap, he knows no boundaries and he says whatever he's thinking. What am I saying? He's like that all the time. Nap or no nap!

So, we're all having fun driving through the grocery store when we ran into some traffic in the cereal aisle. The boy yells out to everyone. "MOVE, PEOPLE!!!"

(Yes, in the privacy of our own car, when people are driving slowly, both my husband and I have been known to mutter in a somewhat exasperated manner, "Move, people!" The boy hit it dead-on. Exactly the right inflection. Perfect.)

Imagine his chagrin when nobody moved, but instead just stood there staring at him with amused looks on their faces.

The boy would have none of this, so he leaned out the side of the car and began waving his arms yelling "MOVE, PEOPLE!!!"

The husband and I exchanged some horrified (yet slightly amused) looks ourselves and I backed up the cart and made a bee-line for frozen foods.

Thomas, I was too hasty...

Oh, Thomas, I'm afraid I was too hasty in my judgement of you. For now, because of you, the boy goes "poopy" on the potty willingly!

Yes, that's right, in order to get the boy to go poop on the potty we've begun to bribe him. If he goes poop on the potty, he gets one of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains. (which, by the way, fit perfectly on the IKEA wooden toy train set - way cool!)

One week ago, after the boy had pooped in his pants every day for the past 5 days (and he poops three times a day, mind you!) - with no hint of it bothering him one bit - I got desperate. He hadn't pooped all day and at dinner that night, I told him, "If you go poopy on the potty, we'll get you a train." I let this sink in a little bit and then after dinner asked him if he wanted to go poop so we could go get him a train. He immediately went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and went poop. I was stunned.

(Sorry, had to take a break there - I heard some magical words: "I need to go potty." Wow!!!)

It was 8:30 at the time and almost past bedtime at that point, but we loaded everyone up in the car and went to buy trains. We ended up getting 11 trains, thinking that we would probably go through them rather quickly, but by that point, he might actually have the hang of it.

The rules were that he would get a train each time he went poop on the potty. BUT, if he had an accident, either pee-pee or poo-poo, then he would lose a train.

Earlier today, we were down to 5 trains. (and he started off with the 4 original ones from IKEA)

It's been a rather bad couple of days. I think earlier this week, we were up to 9 trains. I was quite hopeful at that point. But as they have dwindled, I've started to have some doubts.

We'll see. The current count is 6 - he went poop after dinner. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the count throughout the upcoming days.

But now, I'm hearing some other words coming from the living room, "You stay there, I'm going to jump over you." As a mother, I suppose I should go check on that. As a former child myself, I think I might sit here and listen for awhile longer...

Still Alive

Ok, really, I'm still alive!

Last week, I spent my time cleaning out my office, going through all kinds of stuff that I had accumulated in almost 11 years (!) and talking to people about my decision.

I have quite a bit of vacation accumulated, and since there wasn't really much for me to do on my current project, I decided I'd just take vacation for this week. I went in yesterday and this morning to gather up my last few things and now I'm at home for the rest of this week! It should be a nice break. (and one in which I can update my blog!) :)

But first, I'm off to get caught up on everyone else's blogs!...

The cat is out of the bag

Well, the cat is out of the bag. I turned in my letter of resignation from my job today and people are descending on me like flies. Where are you going? What did the boss say? How much of a raise are you getting?...

The new job is only 2 miles away from my house. The husband is already talking about selling one car and getting a scooter instead! I figure I'll need to get settled into my job before actually changing anything more in our lives. One change per month is good for me.

And I'm really looking forward to this change. I have been unable to be excited about my job for awhile now, so I'm hoping that this change is what I need.

And if not, I'm running away to the circus. :)

The blog about poop

Since this is quickly becoming the blog about poop, I guess I should just continue it today. Bear with me...

Yesterday my husband was out of town, so I couldn't get the play-by-play report during the daytime. But I did get a good dose of it last night.

Since the husband was out of town yesterday and I'm lazy, I decided to take the kids to Chick-fil-A. That way, I didn't have to figure out what to feed them and they could play afterwards and I wouldn't have to figure out how to entertain them! Brilliant, if I do say so myself!

However, I knew this was quite a gamble considering our potty training efforts thus far. And about half-way there, I was kicking myself because I didn't think about the fact that I probably should have put a pull-up on him just in case things got messy.

We got there, got our food, and ate in relative calm. Then, before we packed up and headed into the play area, I told the kids that we needed to go potty before going to play. The boy was very excited about this prospect, so I took that as a good sign.

We went into the handicapped bathroom stall, where I immediately started repeating, "don't touch anything, don't touch anything, don't touch anything" - it usually takes about 5 times of repitition before anything sinks into the kids' heads.

Then came the hard part. I was trying to convince the boy to sit on the toilet because it was too tall for him to stand at when he finally said that he needed to go "poopy". He sat down on the toilet and pooped right away. The triumphant feeling I got was dampened only slightly by the fact that a little glob of it ended up in his underwear when he stood up, so I had to change them anyway. No big deal, the boy went poop in the potty. I was on cloud 9. We survived.

I tried to get him to go pee, but he insisted that he didn't have to, so we ALL washed hands (the girl had kept herself busy by hanging on the handrails next to the toilet, playing with the toilet paper, and generally touching everything in sight while I continued my mantra of "don't touch anything, don't touch anything"...) and we headed to the play area.

Shortly after the kids began playing, the boy came and told me that he needed to go potty. I could tell that his shorts were already slightly wet, so I knew we needed to get there fast. We hurried to the bathroom and I tried as quickly as possible to pull down his pants, only to find that he had pooped in his pants. And as I stood there processing this fact, trying to figure out how to get him to the potty to go pee without contaminating everything else in the process, he began peeing all over the floor and his already soiled clothing.

Ok, you know those paper towels that are in all fast-food restaurants? They're not really very absorbent. And just in case you ever wonder what may have been on the floor of a fast-food restaurant bathroom before you go in to use the facilities? Well, I wouldn't put my bag down on that floor if I were you.

What a mess. I managed to get it cleaned up and I did have the foresight to pack extra clothes for the boy in case such a thing happened, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But it was close.

Next time, I'm stayin' home.

Breaking news...

The poop tally today:
- once on the potty
- once in the pants at the park
- once on the potty

We're getting closer! :)

Four times

Disclaimer: This post will discuss poop, as well as a description of it. Courtney, put down your snack... :)

So, the boy ended up pooping in his pants four times yesterday. Twice in the morning at the park, once in the afternoon before naptime, and once in the evening.

And to make it even worse, after not pooping for an extended period of time, his little system seemed to have gotten kind of upset so that when I found him last night, standing alone in the living room, somewhat afraid to move, it had run down his leg and was beginning to puddle on the floor.

The last one was so bad that I finally did break down and rinse his underwear and shorts out in the toilet - I got over my phobia of getting toilet water on my hands. I figured if I'm going to be getting poop on my hands anyway, what's a little toilet water? (ick, it makes me cringe just to type that)

So, no progress on the pooping front. We talked a lot about it last night before bedtime and we played with his little Reddy Rabbit and made him go poop on the potty a few times last night. We'll see if it has any effect today.

If we get through this, the girl is next. Immediately. We gotta get this over with! Ick.

Saving up

Disclaimer: this post will discuss poop, however, there will be no descriptions. We'd have to actually have some poop in order to describe.

Yes, it apparently turns out that the boy is anal-retentive. Literally. He's now afraid to go poop. He keeps on trying to go off in a corner so that he can poop as he always has - in his pants - but we keep on catching him and hauling him off to sit on the potty so he can poop and he'll just have none of that.

It's been about 40 hours since he's pooped. And for a little boy that usually would poop at least 3 times a day, I have a feeling this is becoming quite uncomfortable. I'm beginning to worry about constipation and pain at this point.

So, I figure my next post will either be describing some massive and explosive incident, or a jubilative celebration of the deposition of a long overdue shipment into the potty. I'm REALLY hoping for the latter.

Things I learned this weekend

These are the things I learned this past weekend (including Friday):

1. I can survive an interview.

2. It's REALLY hot here. Ok, I knew this, but we decided to go for a bike ride on Friday at around noon and yeah, it's hot.

3. The best way to clean nasty poop out of underwear (so far, 5 times since Saturday morning) is to try to dig most of it out with some toilet paper, wipe as much more off of it with toilet paper, then run it under water in the utility sink until the big chunks are off of it. Then wash hands three times with antibacterial soap and vow to use some bleach on the utility sink once the potty training is going better.

4. Lucky Burger has good onion rings - and they deliver! PLUS, the kids will eat Lucky Burger chicken nuggets! (The boy has always refused to eat any nuggets other than Wendy's or Chick-fil-A. And forget about the frozen kind that you can just heat up in the oven. No, the boy has quite the discerning taste!)

5. The boy told me on Saturday morning that, "You have a good team." I'm not sure exactly what that was supposed to mean, but he apparently felt strongly about it because he followed it up with, "You simply do." ("simply" seems to be his word of choice lately!)

6. The boy can go pee-pee standing up at the toilet! (I know this must be quite exciting for all of you...)

7. After falling asleep for only 30 minutes on the bike during a morning bike ride, the girl will definitely NOT take a nap in the afternoon. Even if she's rubbing her eyes and being cranky and tired. No, no. Put her in her bed and she'll just run around in circles, jump, and try to figure out how long she can hang with one hand on one side of the crib and one hand on the other side. (it's only about 1 second)

8. The boy will not, in fact, poop his pants while we're off on a bike ride, even though he definitely needs to go, but refuses to go on the potty. But he will pee his pants and then once we get home and get some dry clothes on him, he'll do it again 2 more times, and then he'll poop his pants three times in succession.

9. It's much, much easier to purge toys from the house after the kids have gone to bed. And then when they get up the next morning, it's like Christmas because the toys are organized and they can find a bunch of things they had forgotten about.

10. If you split a couple of bottles of wine during the weekend and only kind of watch what you eat over the weekend, you're probably not going to lose as much weight as you had hoped you might over one week of virtually starving yourself.

Don't go there

Yesterday, as I was filling up my cup from watercooler next to the coffee machines, one of my co-workers was getting some coffee. He decided to try to make a little joke.

He said, "Hey, you know what's gonna happen if you drink all that water don't you?"
I replied, "It's just gonna make me have to go pee?"
"That's right." He said, a little deflated.

Today I happened to meet him again as I was carrying my oatmeal over to the microwave to heat it up.

I teased him, "You're not going to say anything about this are you?"
"No, no, I'm not gonna go there!"

At long last

Well, at long last, it looks as if we might be making a little progress in the potty training arena. Wait. Let me rephrase that. It looks like the nanny is making progress. The boy refuses to do it for us most of the time. Which then ends up in a big fight between us and the boy and sometimes his eventual peeing on the floor, as he did last night!

During our first attempts at potty training back in September, he turned into a little monster. He wanted to sit on the potty, even the big toilet. But we couldn't get him to get OFF the toilet. After an hour of sitting on the toilet, we finally had to wrestle him to the floor and forcibly put his pants back on him. Then he started throwing fits when it was time to get dressed in the morning and he started throwing fits all the time. He was a different little boy. We discontinued the attempts at potty training and he turned normal again. Everyone told us not to despair, that we could try again later and he would be more ready.

Well, given our first full-blown experience with potty training, we weren't in a huge hurry to attempt it again. Especially since he would pull the same kind of stuff almost every time he used the potty before bath time.

He would sit on the potty, go pee, then we would try to get him into the tub. He would head towards the tub and then say, "No, I need to go potty again." And then he would sit on the potty again. We tried explaining to him that we were happy that he wanted to use the potty, but after you go pee-pee once, there's probably not anymore going to come out and we could try again later. "NO!!!!! I WANT TO GO POTTY NOW!!!!!" And it would continue. Sometimes he would stand and scream through his entire bath. Yeah, we were definitely not interested in dealing with that for a month or more while we tried to convince him to use the potty.

Now, however, in the last couple of weeks, he's begun to wear Pull-ups and sometimes even big-boy pants. But only for the nanny. This past weekend, he absolutely would not sit on the potty for us.

I know this somehow is related to his need to be in control, or at least feel like he's in control. And we try to give him options. "Do you want to use your potty in the upstairs bathroom, or in the downstairs bathroom?" "Do you want to use your little potty, or the big potty?" Etc. But sometimes, if we smile just right and hold his hand just right, we can lead him into the bathroom and get him to sit on the potty while we use the toilet. Baby steps, huh? Ugh.

Well, I think we might attempt potty boot camp this coming weekend. We'll just stay at home and put underwear on him and clean everything up as necessary. We'll see how that goes. If we don't survive, please come looking for us...

Quote of the day

From someone at my office: You would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not looking around.

Point taken.

Trip Report

Well, it was a long trip, but it was worth it!

We started out on Thursday and made it to northern Oklahoma for the night. Unfortunately, the husband and I were so hyped up on caffeine that we had a hard time sleeping that night. And there was a BIG thunderstorm. That was kind of nice.

On Friday, we made it to my hometown by around 2:00. And of course, my parents had Runza's waiting for us.

(and just in case you're wondering, we managed to have Runza's three times while we were there - Yum!)

We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning in my hometown and then headed over to my mom's hometown for the Memorial Day festivities. On Monday, we started the trek back home.

It was kind of a quick trip, but I think my parents managed to squeeze an entire summer of fun into the 48 hours we were at their house. The kids checked out my dad's waterfall, pond, and fish (and as soon as the boy saw the fish, he said he needed to get a net and headed for the garage - he remembered from a year ago that there was a fish net in the garage!!), they played in the sprinkler, we went to a bicycle race (more on that later), the kids helped my dad buy the plants and seeds and then helped him to plant his garden, they made mud pies with my mom, they helped make homemade ice cream, and they had lots of fun with their uncle. There was something going on every moment we were there and it was a fun, fun time.

The thing that amazed us the most about this trip was that there was a bicycle race going on in my hometown for the weekend. Well, we couldn't let this opportunity pass without going to see it. I mean, the first time a bicycle race has ever been held in my hometown and we're actually there? No way could we miss that.

So, on Saturday, we spent the morning and part of the afternoon watching the Monumental Memorial Cycling Race. It was really cool and quite funny, actually. We were the only spectators there for the start. And when we went to the little town out on the race route, we were the only people there who weren't somehow related to one of the riders. People were amazed that we would come to watch this. But, when they heard our kids yelling, "Go Georgie!" they knew we must be some kind of cycling fans. :)

Ok, actually, I lied just a couple of paragraphs before there - the thing that amazed us the most about the trip was that when we got to my mom's hometown on Sunday, it was 101F! It was hotter in Nebraska than it was in Houston! Come on, we go north to escape the heat and it followed us right up there?

Well, Monday morning, the husband began loading the car. He came back to the hotel room after the first trip out to the car and announced, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the temperature has dropped about 50 degrees. The bad news is that the wind changed direction and we now seem to be down-wind of a feed lot." And with my first step out of the hotel, I knew he spoke the truth. It was almost chilly! And it smelled. Ah, well, it wasn't that bad. Any time we smelled that smell when I was growing up, my mom always said, "Money, money, money!" She raised us right. :)

So, the trip was a success. We got to see all the relatives and we managed to survive the car rides. I'm coming back kind of bruised and battered, however. The kids were so excited to be out of the car on Thursday night that we couldn't make them stop jumping on the bed. I happened to try to change the girl's diaper and then didn't get away from her quickly enough before she started jumping again and ended up with her head smashing into my mouth. I got a busted lip and spent most of the trip with this swollen, bruised lip. Every time I looked in the mirror, I couldn't figure out why I had chocolate below my bottom lip. Then I would remember that it was a bruise and it wouldn't come off. Uhg.

And then on Saturday, I got a sunburn which then got irrated somehow and now I have a rash all over my neck. I'm lookin' pretty good these days.

After this trip, however, I've decided that I don't like Thomas the Tank Engine. For the boy's birthday party, I bought Thomas stuff since our plan was to have his party at Hermann Park and ride the little train there. At the time, the boy had watched Thomas a few times - just enough to know who he was, but not enough to be a gigantic fan. Well, I made the mistake of buying a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD for the trip and it became his favorite DVD.

It has become one of my least favorite ones! Not because I'm sick of it, but because those trains are just not nice! They're always mad at each other, competing against each other, or teasing each other. It's almost as bad as Sponge Bob Square Pants. I'm putting that DVD far back on the shelf.

Anyway, other than this small snaffoo, the trip went off pretty well. We're glad we went and we'll probably do it again. Just give us a few months to forget any of the painful parts...