Potty Training Experience

Let me give you a brief glimpse as to what potty training has brought into our lives with a small scene from this morning:

Connor: Mom, come and see, I peed in the toilet....I need a wipe. Where are the wipes?

I have had to remove all toilet paper from their regular and convenient location, as Abi found it most useful to use an entire roll of toilet paper when she used the toilet, thus costing us $400 to have a plumber come out and snake our main sewage line because our basement had begun to flood regularly due to the blockage.

Abi runs to the bathroom to see the success of her brother as I tend to a necessary song and dance of "Tomorrow" with Carly. There is a whooshing sound from the bathroom, indicating that Abi has flushed the toilet.

Connor: Abi! Argh!!! That is my pee, I get to flush the toilet.

Yes, even flushing the toilet has become a privilege in the house, one that only belongs to the person who actually used the toilet.

Abi (tromping out of the bathroom, puts her hands on her hips): Connor, you are driving me crazy! Go to your room right now!

Connor: Hee-Haw (mimicking Pinnochio and covers his mouth upon determining he is a donkey)

Abi: Is that your underwear? I have my underwear (she has taken a pair of diaper covers from the closet to use this morning...not for long). Look.

They forgive each other so quickly. We forgive each other quickly. That is what is getting me through this whole potty training experience.

I started potty training both of them in April.

No potty train in a day (tried the potty party, didn't fly).

No potty train in a week (I've got some stubborn kids)

No potty training boot camp (sometimes I felt like a drill sergeant though)

Just long, consistent, patient, laundry filled days of nagging and reminding and praising and crying (mostly on my part).

Connor is now 4 1/2 and Abi is 2 1/2. There are ups and downs to each of their ages and the potty training challenges that follow.

With Connor being older, he can take care of himself. After one week of H-E-L-L, he no longer needs me to be there with him. He takes care of it all by himself from start to finish and I don't have to worry about him. LOVELY!!!!!!

Abi still needs me to open the door, pull down her pants, put her on the toilet, help her wipe, take her off of the toilet, remind her to wash her hands (which sometimes I wish I didn't as it turns into a seriously long and wet play-time). Thus taking a very precious 5 minutes from my day (I am saying that sarcastically).

The hardest part was for me. Having Carly still in diapers, and having the diapers in the house, it was easy for me to cave and go back to diapering after a rough day. I would find Connor in Carly's room trying to put on a diaper...same with Abi. And, Abi had started acting like a baby and asking for a binky again....I would find her stealing them from Carly's crib and hiding somewhere to suck on one. I felt like such a mean mom. But I wasn't going to give in. I got rid of all diapers from any area of the house except for Carly's room, and put one of those obnoxious door knob covers on her door to prevent the kids from going in and getting them.

With Connor, the first three days were miserable but I expected the accidents. He knew that if he went potty in the toilet he would get a Transformer. He would tell us all about it...he got the whole reward system. After day three, he just started holding it...all day...painful....crying...misery. I finally held him on the toilet until he produced something and after that it was like a lightbulb turned on and he got it. That weekend we took him to the store to get a Transformer. Connor has mastered the peeing portion. No accidents in a long time. He stays dry through the night. But what he is still struggling with is taking care of #2. I have given him an enima once and he hated it so much, that threatening him with one got us somewhere, but the last few nights he has pooped in his sleep (who does that?). Maybe I need to start pulling out the enima every night before bed to prevent that from becoming a habit. His uncle Ike has told him that if he goes poop in the toilet 5 times, he will take him to see Tranformers...Todd has promised another Transformer. But we make him start over after every accident...even the ones that happen in his sleep.

Abigail continued to have multiple accidents...especially pooping in her panties. It was driving me up a wall. Mostly because she would poop in her panties just minutes after I would have sat her on the toilet. I decided to forgo panties. The panties became the reward (I was SO sick of washing underwear....frankly, I still am). So, wearing dresses every single day and going commando, she has finally grasped the idea that it is best to use the toilet for all of her bodily functions. It is amazing! Without fail, the moment I put panties on her the accidents begin, but no undies and she has no accidents. Good thing she doesn't go to school for a few years, we can work on this some more. She stays dry through the night, but the trick with her is making sure that as soon as I hear her singing in her room in the morning, I rush to put her on the toilet. Otherwise three songs later she has wet the bed.

I am dying with laughter as to the discovery of body parts that has also taken place during this process. Needless to say, Abi and Connor no longer bathe together. At least Connor is using proper terms!

Oh, and one Sunday Carly had an accident so I had to take her home to clean up her little bloody ear. When I returned Todd told me that Abi needed to use the toilet and my friend, Janel, was kind enough to take her to the bathroom. I was horrified! That morning, I was out of clean panties for Abi, so I had put her in a pair of Connor's Transformer underoos. I can only imagine what Janel must have thought of me at that moment.

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson...which reminds me that I should probably go and wash another load of undies right now.

Nothing to Blog About

I could blog in detail about the following events in our life (these are not in any kind of chronological/importance order):

Potty Training Connor (surprisingly only took about a week)

Potty Training Abi (more frustrating than I thought and we are still not 100%)

Weeding, Weeding, Weeding

Picnic with the Buchert's

Long morning walks with Janel

Suzy rescuing me almost daily with a Diet Pepsi

Trip to "the farm" at Gardner Village where Abi & Carly did not like riding the horses while Connor cried out "Ride 'em cowboy" with glee.

Connor having an absolute melt-down during fireworks

Prepping the yard for some much needed sod...so we don't have to weed any more

Playdate with Pilly & Raja

Basement flooding/clean-up/plumber repairing clog

Card Making

Working on a book for Kelli's Wedding Guests to sign-in

Cousins pictures

Putting into practice and feeling successful at Grocery Smarts

(thanks to Todd's help)

Teaching Abi her colors and still needing to work on them

Neighbor secretly installing a much needed gate on the side of our house

Visit from Adam, Angie, Tyson & Porter

Using our BBQ grill regularly

Stever Turner using our grill and then sharing his amazing ribs with us

Grateful to be living in our own little home with our own little problems

and a job to pay for them.

Buying and putting together a swingset by myself

Reading.....lots and lots of reading

(Jane Eyre, Sense & Sensibility, Return to Red Castle, Jayhawk,

Mermaid's Purse, The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society, Austenland)

All of the plants & bushes I transplanted in the spring dying

One perfect evening at the Secondhand Serenade concert

Campbell's inviting us over for dinner, only to bring it to us instead.

Movie watching

(Harry Potter, Arrested Development Series, The Proposal, Rumor Has It,

Jane Austen Book Club, Jane Eyre (2 versions/1 very lame),

Wives & Daughters, North & South, Persuasion, Mansfield Park,

Northanger Abbey, Wuthering Heights)

Todd's motorcycle lessons

Realizing exactly how blessed I am to have Todd in my life.

But I don't think it is necessary to give all the details. Blogging has taken a back-seat to my life this summer and perhaps it is exactly what our household needed.

I have had a lot of time to reassess the many relationships in my life and try to work on improving myself. I have a long way to go, but looking back at this list of things done, perhaps I'm on a good path.

Space...Connor's Frontier

Do you remember when I teased you about my little guy's bedroom? Well, I think it is finished (I am still up in the air as to whether or not do a treatment on his window....give me your thoughts on the poll to the right).

Here are the befores:

Here are the afters:



I purchase the paint when Lowe's was having their Memorial Day Sale (they had a rebate for Valspar Paint) and I also had a 20% off coupon, so with two gallons of American Tradition by Valspar's Hampton Surf Blue, I got to work....just two coats later, a peel of the tape (and some MAJOR touching up on the white stripes) we were ready to put this galaxy together!

My dad printed out the planets on his massive printer. They are on a heavy vinyl and I sprayed two coats of clear varnish over the top to prevent them from getting ruined by greasy fingers and things of a childlike nature. We used a 3M spray adhesive to get them to adhere to the wall, and rolled them on to make sure there would be no air bubbles.

The sun on the ceiling, my dad printed on a lighter paper (seeing as how the kids SHOULDN'T be able to reach up there) in the hopes that gravity would not pull it out of orbit. Connor got those cute glow-in-the-dark stars for Christmas in his stocking.

The lettering is just your run-of-the-mill vinyl that my dad cut out. If you are interesting in having a room like this of your own, he wants me to tell you that it will cost $1,000. I think my dad is sick of me asking for his help on these projects and is saying these things to get me to stop asking. HA! We still have to finish a jungle in Abi's room!

Travelogue, earth date 06192009

MUST.

HAVE.

SAUSAGE BISCUIT WITH EGG.

You see, when I travel, I base the whole trip around food and the things that I don't normally get to enjoy when at home. Nothing suits me more in the morning than a Sausage Biscuit with Egg from the Golden Arches (ha ha ha...little did you know that we would be going to see the Golden Arches that afternoon....isn't the Golden Gate Bridge considered the Golden Arches?). Did you know that there is a McD's just across the street from the entrance to Golden Gate Park? I was so excited and planned a bus route to get us there.

Of course, the Golden Gate Garden is BEAUTIFUL. And HUGE (are you sick of the caps yet?). You could easily get
lost there.
The first place of interest that we hit up was the Academy of Sciences. Todd was loving this building, as it was an architects dream. He took too many pictures of the construction process that was posted on an obscure wall in the corner of the building. Oh, how I love him. He did get a few shots of the roof (pretty cool, and somewhat similar to the little town the Teletubbies live in).
Then it was to the deYoung Museum. There were some very neat exhibits in there, but the Architecture is what we spent our money on to see.
Here I sit, tired...in dire need of something healthy (SHOCK! I said healthy) to eat. This is not a sitting moment of quiet contemplation, it is a sitting of exhaustion.

And let's pray that the camera truly does add ten pounds.

We found a local guy who directed us to the bus that would take us to the Golden Gate Bridge. I had really wanted to ride a bike over the bridge. I am so grateful I didn't. I have a small fear of crowds and a big fear of heights. Those two would have caused me to somehow jump the tall rail and for sure end up in the cold water below (I have a fear of cold water too). Before walking out onto the bridge with the other masses, I paid $10 for a small (albeit healthy) salad and Todd got something that looked so unappetizing to me that I have forgotten it. Then began the windy walk, right next to speeding cars, out onto the bridge. It was massive and an obvious feat of incredible engineering (this coming from the girl that has just had to type engineering four times before spell check informed her that she finally got it right).
Exhausted, and so grateful that Todd brought me along for this much needed get-away. We then packed our bags so the following morning we could return home to the three beautiful children we missed so much.

Travelogue, earth date 06182009

The blisters covered with bandages, wearing ever so comfortable walking shoes, Todd and I headed out around 7:00 am to walk to the wharf where we had reserved two seats on a ferry that would take us over to Alcatraz.

We took a spot on the top of the boat (me crossing my fingers that whole time that Todd doesn't get sea-sick...no replays of our honeymoon necessary) and discovered that we were surrounded...by jellyfish. Not the little blue ones I am accustomed to in Hawaii (I had a close and personal encounter with one at Waimanalo) but these giant beauties:

Okay, so surrounded was a bit of an exaggeration, but we did see about 10-12 of those big guys. The ferry ride was short and sweet and we arrived at Alcatraz safely with a cool breeze blowing and blue skies.
Alcatraz was very interesting. Somewhat odd that thousands of people want to walk through there, but hey...it's history. I have never visited a prison before and wasn't sure what to expect, but the tour was cool and I was grateful that I have never tried to rob a bank or killed someone (and been caught). Accomodations like those aren't meant for someone like me...although there were moments that those cells reminded me of apartment #2 in Honolulu (someone else felt like a prisoner there and tried to eat his way through the bars). There was a man in the little Gift Shop that was a prisoner on the island the last four years it was open for robbing a bank. I can't believe he would want to come back and visit a place like that...but he was signing books, so if it's for money, it can't be that bad.

Lunch....my tummy was grumbling and I wanted nothing more than some super-duper-oohy-gooey nachos. Hey, I was on vacation, bring on the junk! Besides, with as much as walking we have been doing, my body needed this kind of energy. While dining on our oh-so-healthy lunch (Todd had a hot dog, FYI) I noticed this sign:
Heaven knows I have made mistakes like this....it's nice to see that other humans are truly humans and we aren't really about to be taken over by "surrogates" (if you have seen the super creepy preview, you'll know what I am talking about).

Then it was time for something sweet before we headed on another long walk....ice cream. Yum! While enjoying our ice cream on a little bench, a juggling entertainer took center stage and thrilled us all with death-defying acts of juggling balls and even swords...while standing on a teetering-tottering-rolling board that he needed Todd's help getting up on.
We stopped in at a huge candy store. You know the kind, with all the barrels full of sweets and they give you your own basket (the kinds you should put healthy apples in) to aid you in your reaping of their harvest. Oh, we reaped. We didn't look at prices and wound up with $40 in candy to take home to our kids. They loved the gross Gummy-Rat and snake, the candy lipgloss and pez dispensers...needless to say, we didn't buy them one more thing the whole trip. Thank heaven they are just kids and that is probably what they will remember the most about us returning home...the delicious candy. REPORT: Dentist appointments, they had no cavities. We are not THAT bad of parents.

The walk home was slow and uneventful and we tried to download a video to watch in the hotel room that night...but it took too long to download and we couldn't watch it until 2 days after we arrived home. Those crazy European hotels!

P.S. Thanks for staying tuned in. It has been a busy time what with potty training and laundry and those sorts of things.

Travelogue, earth date 06172009

30.

I woke up this particular morning with a new age to my name.

Of course, when I awoke there was no one in the room and I woke at my own ever-so-slow pace. I grabbed a handful of salt-water taffy for breakfast, picked up "Austenland" and began reading which then led to finishing the book. Then I grabbed my caffeine-free Diet Pepsi (really, should I be drinking something with so many words in it's title?) from the mini fridge and turned on the TV. The morning of champions....no doubt.

Brainless television.

We have two televisions in our home. No cable, no converter boxes, no nothing. Just good old fashioned movies, so this was something new to me. After two episodes of "True Hollywood Stories" (one about Full House the other about Home Improvement), I realized I wasn't missing anything in life by not having the thing blaring in my home all day and decided to turn the thing off and get ready.

I was supposed to meet up with Todd at the office around 11am. So, I put on my walking shoes and headed to Old Navy. My friend told me there was a bargain basement with killer deals there. I got there and the bargain basement was shut down.

Wah.

But I did pick up something cute for the girls and some shirts for Todd (all men's stuff was 1/2 off...that's a bargain) and headed back to the office. While waiting for their meeting to end, I started reading Sense & Sensibility. Tough one to get into. I think I read the first chapter twice just to get into my head all of the different characters in the book.

Lunchtime! The group came out of the meeting and we walked to this little place called Sam's. The atmosphere was bland (okay, maybe "original"...the decor probably hadn't been changed since it had first opened 50 years ago) and the food was normal (something I could have made at home)...but then again, I was comparing it to the meal I had last night. However, I loved that all the waiters were wearing tuxedos and each of them had accents from different countries.

The rest of the group had to return to the airport. We said our good-byes to his co-workers (great group of people, I had a lot of fun with them) and Todd and I started out on our journey for a long day of walking.

First stop to the start of our vacation together:

Coit Tower

The walk there was enjoyable as we had just a slight breeze most of the way. The weather was perfect. Sunshine and the perfect temperature. I could not believe how many hills we had to trek to get to the tower, and what amazed me even more was seeing this:

Imagine walking home from a long day at the office, only to have to hike more stairs to get to your apartment? Or what about calling the Elder's Quorum President to help you move? How many guys do you think would show up that day? Crazy!

The ride up the elevator kind of reminded me of the ride "Tower of Terror." There was this cute little Asian lady that would open the door, push the button and then let us out. Imagine that job! She did have a tip jar attached to one of the walls...fair enough. She did try to give us some history of Coit Tower on the ride up and down, but her English was so broken that none of us in the elevator really understood. You could tell by the long pauses of silence and the occasional sympathy laugh after she said something she would smile at. I liked her....none of that was very tower of terror-y, but the creeky old elevator itself was what reminded me of the scary amusement ride.

Then came the decent down the hill to our next stop....but first, a quick stop to take a couples picture:

We could see from Coit Tower where we were headed next, Lombard's Crooked Street.

This is taken from the backside of the upper picture...you can see Coit Tower here on the right...we walked from there to the famous street

It was a straight shot there...as far as the road goes but it went up and down and up and up and up. We hesitated walking up the jiggedy-jaggedy street as we were starting to get sweaty and tired, but I am glad we did. The homes along Lombard Street were beautiful and well maintained. But our favorite was at the top....we watched as a man on a motorcycle decided to descend down the crookedest street and after only 15 feet, you could see the panic on his face as he thought "I am going to tip this bike and not make it down safely."

Can you see him in this picture..this was right before he decided to think twice at that little landing pad.

Todd had just recently finished a motorcycle class and was loving every minute of it (so were many other tourists as it was as though he was now the dare-devil entertainment for the afternoon)...the biker parked his bike on the first level spot he could find and we didn't stay around to see if he was going to finish going down or forget what the signs say about it being a one way street and just head back from whence he came (that is what I would have opted for).

Then we chose to walk back to the apartment, but the route we took was not one that I think many tourists should ever take. Every city has their sketchy parts of town, and we found San Francisco's.

The reason we took this route was because, we wanted to see the walking distance from the Orpheum Theater to our Hotel. Bad/Good idea. Bad because I clung to Todd for fear of being stolen (yes, I know that sounds dramatic). I couldn't believe how many people would just come up to Todd and either put their arm around him and ask for money honestly saying it was for beer, or just yell. It reminded me of all the homeless people in Hawaii and the horrible addiction to Ice that is plaquing them there.

It was good because it let us know that we should probably take a cab home from the Orpheum Theater that night and not attempt to walk home so late at night.

We made it home in one piece and I was only shaken a little. After a nice nap and showers, we headed to my Birthday restaurant of choice....Burger King. After so much fancy food (two meals is so much, in my book) I really just wanted something cheap and greasy.

After our very fancy feast, we headed to the Orpheum Theater, this time walking on the opposite side of the street, having taken note earlier that it contained less people that I might have to turn away because I wasn't in the mood for handing out cash. And for having those less charitable thoughts (and probably because I was wearing heels) I got a blister on each foot shortly before arriving at the theater.

What were we going to the theater for?

WICKED!!!!!!!

I had heard great things about it, and everyone who has seen it has just raved. And after sitting through it (my blisters no longer bothered me once I was engulfed in the story and the amazing vocal talent) I can see what the buzz is all about. It was a fantastic musical (I like musicals of almost all nature....however, the last time Todd and I saw a musical was in Boston and we left at Intermission because of it's vulgarity and sexual content....I am a PG kind of person).

The cab ride home was fabulous (on my feet) and I had secretly hoped that San Francisco had one of those "Cash Cabs" (yet another brainless show Todd and I found ourselves watching frequently while at the hotel) so that we could win some fun money to compensate for what we/I were/was spending. No money won, but the cab driver was friendly and took our money without any problem.

Yes, I know that's his job. And I was grateful to not have to hobble home with bad blisters. I would have made a pathetic pioneer.