Success

Sweet did it. No accidents yesterday. We had special treats last night for being successful in our last battle with the potty. We celebrated and cheered for her. During which Sugar decided that he had enough of hearing how wonderful Sweet is doing. Every time I said something good about Sweet he would reply with Good Job Sugar (ok fill in his real name for those of you who know)! Too funny. He's starting to ask to use the potty more, but is just sitting for now. I'll take it though. It is a step in the right direction. Sweet also got to pick out what big girl panties she was going to wear today instead of the training panties that she's been in thus far. It took a few minutes for her to decide between Elmo and My Little Pony. In the end Elmo won out, but she's already requested Pony panties for tomorrow. Too cute my sweet little girl.

We also went shopping today at a store we don't often venture to. It about 30 minutes from home, but not near any of the other stores we normally shop at. Anyways about half way home Sweet requested potty. Ok Sweet we'll be home in a few minutes, can you hold it honey? Wait till we get home and then we'll sit on the potty ok? Guess what! She made it! I'm very excited that potty training has gone so smoothly for her, but I think I'm going to have a long dificult road ahead of me with the boys. Only time will tell.

My Kids are Eaters

I'm almost afraid of the teen years. They already out eat us on a regular basis. This morning I had to make three adult helpings of oatmeal(the real stuff) and raisins. Then at lunch Sweet ate half a tuna sandwich and two helpings of baked mac and cheese, Sugar ate half a tuna sandwich half a chicken breast and a helping of baked mac and cheese, Bam only ate mac and cheese. He normally is a big eater, but has been refusing lunch for the past week. At least he ate today. I think it's his teeth. He just got a new one this week. He's only one behind Sweet. I think he may get all of his before she does. They routinely out eat me at dinner too. I'd be worried, but Sugar is way underweight, Bam is underweight, and Sweet is average. We may need to buy a farm.

Hope in Sight?

Well Sweet seems to have developed a dislike for pooing in the potty. I know this is common, but knowing this doesn't make it any less frustrating. She now lets me know when she needs to pee. I occasionally ask, but she usually says no when I ask and goes when she wants. I keep reminding her that big girls poo on the potty and she's a big girl now. I took her to the potty several times today and asked/told her to try to poo, but she refused. She did it within in a few minutes of me taking her, while I was changing someone's diaper.

Sugar decided that he would return to trying to go on the potty again today. I'm relieved. I talked to him about starting to be a big boy and wearing undies and using the potty all the time starting tomorrow (and he was excited), but then I realized that we're having company tomorrow. Maybe Monday. We'll see what he thinks of that.

He truly is fascinated by the potty. He wants to flush whenever Sweet goes. He's usually in the bathroom when she's going. He wants to wash his hands, because she gets to after she goes. The fact that she has a piece of paper covered in stickers (rewards) on the refrigerator kills him, he admires it several times a day.

Bam's new fascination is getting up in the face of his brother and sister and yelling/screaming at them. It's this really odd AHHH! It's kind of amusing, I know I shouldn't encourage it. It is rather upsetting to them. Sugar often starts whining and telling him no and Sweet starts to whimper and tell him no. Not the best behavior, but atleast he's not biting and hitting as much. I guess it's a step in the right direction. I keep hoping that he'll be easier once he can communicate, unfortunately for him, he's the only one that speaks caveman around here.

As for us, we're getting a new refrigerator. Our old(I mean old, it came with the house) one just doesn't seem to be big enough for our family anymore. By the time we fill it with the groceries, there's no room to put leftovers in it. Plus it's bad when you're at the store and opting not to buy something because you don't think it will fit in the frig. We will keep the old one in the garage for extras. We were able to get a really good deal. We went to a Sears Outlet and found one that we liked (not what we had origionally hoped for but it's a huge step up from what we have) and to top it off, it was mispriced, but they agreed to give it to us for the mismarked price. The bad news is that our opening is a 1/16 of an inch too short so Chuck had to pull down the cabinet and is going to try to plane it down tomorrow and then stain it. Fun Fun.

Another plus is I finally got out and got a new hair cut. I love the woman I go to. She does a great job, goes off of the little information I give her when I want a new style and always comes up with something I love. Plus she had triplets (a few years behind me in school) so he can understand and relate to what my life is like, which is a very rare quality.

So Far So Good

So this was my house or rather my kitchen and foyer yesterday. But it was all worth it. No accidents yesterday, even dry at nap time. No accidents today, and we even went out. She's telling us when she has to go!

I decided to try with Sugar this morning. That was a no go. We'll try again in a few weeks. We got another puzzle yesterday. Sugar got to go out with Dad for some one on one time so he got to pick it out. Imagine that, he picked a train. The one on one time definitely helped his disposition.

Now that Bam has realized what the pieces are for (aka not for teething) he loves them. They've been playing with them a lot lately. Bam's starting to enjoy coloring too. He still has to be supervised so that he doesn't eat the crayons, but he's getting better about it.

Some Success

So today we did it. We moved Sweet to panties. She's wearing a sweatshirt and panties today and has to stay on hard surfaces. I talked to her about it last night and this morning before we started with the panties. I told her that if she didn't go on the potty then she was going to get all wet when she went peepee. To which she replied YUK! We had two accidents in the five and a half hours that she was up this morning. This has me feeling much more optimistic. Last time we tried panties she was wet at least ever half hour and never went on the potty. This time she has sat on the potty without protest every time I told her that she needed to and she has gone a few times. She even told me that she had to go at one point. Hopefully we'll keep going in the right direction so that I can start working with Sugar.

Sugar doesn't seem to be too happy about his sister getting so much attention today. He has decided that he doesn't want to use the potty at all because of it. I know he'll come back around. He just doesn't like when someone else is being doted over.

In the mean time I'm trying to give him as much attention as possible and his imagination is still running wild. For the last couple of weeks he's been pretending to be animals, mostly a cat. He also turns into a frog and a dinosaur. I think I discovered the reason for the reimergence of waking up crying. Yesterday we were playing under a blanket and we ended up having a discussion about a big mean dinosaur that bites his foot. We worked it out that we could feed the dinosaur something else and give him a hug to make him happy and nice. Since then we've had no crying.

Bam is not so sure why most of the toys have moved (to hard surface areas), but he does enjoy that fact that the potties are out in the middle of the house, instead of in the bathroom. They are nice to sit on afterall.

Kids Update

Everyone coloring while watching Sesame Street. We had to stagger high chairs so that everyone could see and no one could steal crayons from anyone else.







Sweet's imagination is totally blooming. Lately she has been treating stuffed animals and this large rather unattractive doll as her baby. She will feed, nap, bathe, and diaper her "baby". She will also pretend to diaper herself now, which is rather amusing. She is learning and advancing so much. She knows her ABC, can identify uppercase letters, we're working on lowercase, knows her colors, can count to 10 and actually understands the concept, we're working on 11-20 now. While I don't know that she'll ever pocess the athleticism that Sugar does, she is able to do more gross motor things now, like catch a ball.

We are working on starting to PT her. So far not so good. They've both Sweet and Sugar been interested in the potty for awhile and usually sit on it at least once a day, but aren't willing to make the transition. Girls are supposed to be easier right? If that's true of our family, it's not looking so good. We started with pull ups yesterday. She was ushered to the potty several times and did produce once. I called the pull ups her special panties, but in the end she calls them her princess diapers and thus uses them as a diaper. I think I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and put her in panties tomorrow and keep her on hard surfaces. I know it won't be fun, quick, or easy, but I don't think the pull ups are going to work with her.

Sugar is returning to himself again. He was really good while we were all sick even though he wasn't getting all of the attention that he wanted, but I think it caught up with him. He was rotten for a couple of days, but happily he has returned to being his normal sweet self.

He did however go on the potty a few times yesterday. I think he's a little jealous that his sister is PTing first. I just don't know if I can handle trying to do two at once. Especially two with totally different personalities.




He used to be the one that was always quick to answer questions about numbers or letters. Sweet has become more dominate lately. While I'm happy that she's advancing, I'm sad that he's not as forthcoming with it anymore. I'm trying to work with him independently at least a couple of times a week to hopefully get his confidence in it back.




Bam has really taken to books and loves story time. I'm thankful for that and am hoping that it will help his language skills, which aren't much to speak of. He's so curious and adventurous. We've had to put cabinet and drawer locks on every one in the house because he gets into everything. It's not that he's a bad kid, but he's rough (I don't think he realizes it), curious, and determined. He's a very strong willed child, but he's also a happy child.

He gets upset sometimes that he can not do the things that the other two do. He's very interested in the potty since the others have been using it more. Often times I have to sit him on the potty too. If he's in the bathroom when we are going, he sits on a potty and watches us.

He's been very clingy lately. We got to go out for V day on Saturday, thanks to my aunt offering to watch them. We didn't do anything spectacular, lunch (to a place we had a gift card) and then to a book store to people watch, look around, and have coffee. Nothing fancy, but totally us and very enjoyable. Anyway, he screamed bloody murder for quite awhile after we left. He wants to be held or playing near me quite a bit lately, which makes it rather difficult to function. If I don't hold him when he wants he lets the whole neighborhood know. So we're still working on the self control.



Bam also broke out with another mysterious skin aliment for two days. He would wake with it, I would give him a dose of benadryl and it would go away after about an hour and then he had it again the next day, but not as bad. Nothing has changed as far as food, lotions, soaps, etc. Who knows. I guess I should just be happy that it's gone.

Vent

I am so tired of hearing about the mortgage crisis. I feel bad for the people that have lost their jobs and are now struggling to make their house payments. I don't feel sorry for people who didn't make intelligent decisions when buying their house. Why should tax dollars go to them? Why do they get a break for making a bad decision?

We took out a loan that would be easy to pay on. Is it our dream house? NO. Would I love a bigger, newer, nicer, fancier house? Yes. But we chose to make a safe purchase, a smart purchase. So how about all of the people who made smart decisions get a break for once?

Kind of like the commercials talking about negotiating your tax debt. What? If I didn't pay my taxes I'm sure that they would come after me. How do these people get away without paying huge amounts of taxes and why do they have a right to negotiate a lower amount? How is that fair or right or just?

Guess I'm just tired of the people who play by the rules always getting shafted.

Rough Couple of Days

The illness has spread. I'm not even sure of the order at this point. Sugar had it first. I got it Sunday evening. Chuck got it Monday morning. Sweet got it today. I'm not sure if Bam got it before or after us. I don't know what it is, but it's bad. Chuck and I are starting to come around. The boys don't have much appetite and will do good for quite awhile (sometimes more than 24 hrs) and then be sick again. I'm tired of cleaning. Tired of laundry. Very ready for a healthy family.

Once Again.

So Sugar did pretty well last night. He ate most of his dinner and had a snack before bed without anything resurfacing. He slept well last night and seemed ok this morning. He didn't eat much breakfast, but I chalked that up to a rough day yesterday. I should have thought more of it because his breakfast made a second debut on my couch this morning. So no it wasn't a fun morning. I got to clean couch cushions, pillows, and a child in addition to my normal Sunday house cleaning and laundry (ok so laundry's pretty much a daily thing).

He seems to be doing better now though. He ate and ate at lunch, which did make me a bit nervous, but every time I asked how his belly was he responded with belly all better. Lunch has stayed put and he is acting like himself so we'll see. I don't think I'll hold my breath though.

Still crossing my fingers that the rest of us don't end up with it too.

Chuck has a cough and is losing his voice and I heard Bam coughing after I put him down for a nap, so maybe it's on to round 4 and 5 of illness. I can't wait for spring.

We haven't been albe to build a snow man with the kids since it hasn't been good packing snow. Today it's warmer out so the snow would probably be great, but we're stuck inside due to illness. Blah!