A Catch Up Holiday Post

Well the Christmas season just flew by!  With two extremely excited kids, I had to just do Christmas rather than write about it this year.  It was so much fun though.  They were over the moon excited about Santa, baby Jesus, Ralph (our reindeer alternative to the Elf of the Shelf), snow, trains...

My favorite part of Christmas is the skit at church.  I am in charge of it and I just love it.  This year I let both kids be in even though Lilah is technically too young.  They were mice with their cousins Jade and Junior.  Candi dubbed them "the rat pack."  They were so freaking cute!  I have no pictures.  Mom fail.  My work assistant may have some.  If I ever get a hold of them, I will post some.

The kids got all they wanted and more from Santa, family and friends.  We had lots of time to spend with those that we love, ate a lot of good food and played with a whole bunch of new toys!  It even snowed in the weeks leading up to the big day, which gave us a few extra days off of school and a bunch of memories.

So here it is ladies and gents.  My Christmas photo dump.  Enjoy!

A quick side note....sad that this is a side note and not it's own post...you may notice the gigantic bruise on Lilah's nose in some of the pics.  We thought she broke it, but she didn't. She face planted into the foot board of our bed while running one night.  It bled a lot and she cried a lot.  Thankfully, our professional Christmas pictures were taken before it happened!

A Very Thomas Birthday

Wow, we got so lucky with the weather for Brian's 3rd birthday party! 75 degrees on June 24th, who would have thought!? At his first birthday party we were all melting!! Last year must not have been too bad because I don't remember melting, but 75 is just unbelievable!

As always our wonderful friends and family pitched in to get things ready...making food, running errands, moving tables, etc! The park shelter was decked out in Thomas and his friends! Brian had to be physically restrained many time in order to keep the cake and balloons in place. It's kind of a mean trick to talk up a "Thomas party" to an almost 3 year old all week and then not let him touch the cake and balloons!

He had so much fun at the party though. He was filthy dirty and exhausted from all that playing. It's so nice to have the party at the park. The kids are entertained and clean up is minimal. Not that I would know...my wonderful friends and family took care of that for me!!

Brian got many, many presents and really enjoyed the yummy Thomas cake.

A little perplexed by the candle blowing concept, but very proud of himself once the task was accomplished and everyone cheered!

I was shocked when he stuck the entire Thomas face in his mouth! He also insisted that the face and "track" had to be on his plate!

He ate lots of pizza, gave lots of kisses and was an all around good boy. He was a little thrown off this year by not being able to play with each present as we went along, but he was pretty easily persuaded to move on once he realized there were "more presents" involved.

Thank you to all of our friends and family who came, helped, sent gifts and cards. Your love is much appreciated!

Oh and we got some great belly shots of all the preggos! Of course Shawn had to get in on the action. Nerd.

Mari at 35 weeks, me at almost 37.

Me almost 37 weeks, Jennie at 20.

Shawn has been working on his since college.

Wow, What a Week!

Sunday started with me finally "catching" Brian's bug. I knew I had it all weekend. You don't get puked on twice and not get the bug. I was soooo sick. Shawn even took off work on Monday to take care of Brian since I couldn't.

So you know what happens next. Shawn got the bug on Monday night. And he was home sick Tuesday. Wednesday he worked from home.

Thursday we had another house showing. We both went to work and I took Ruben to Barb's house. Before I left he had peed three times. Once in a potted plant. Like he actually jumped into the plant, hiked his leg and peed on it. Now that's talent, folks.

Somewhere in this crazy week Brian flushed a Thomas train down the toilet. I swear we have had a huge discussion about this before. He even learned to say, "No choo-choos in the water" at a very young age. Apparently that didn't sink in. The train did sink though. Almost all the way to the pipes. Thankfully the plumber got it out before that happened. Apparently that would have involved cutting into pipes and possibly walls. Not the thing we need with the house for sale.

I guess this comes with potty training. We taught him to flush the damn thing, so now he has to practice, right?

Speaking of potty training...it's still going well. He woke up dry again today! We had a minor accident at school, but it was very small and he caught himself. Otherwise, no accidents today!

Lessons Learned

Well, booty camp Day 2 has come to a close and we are calling the weekend a success.

Brian has only had two and a half accidents today! The half happened very close to bath time. I think he was just tired and couldn't hold it in.

Yesterday was not so easy. We spent most of the morning cleaning up pee every time we turned around. We lost count of how many accidents and how many pairs of underwear we went through. I know we did two loads of laundry...not all from accidents, but quite a bit from accidents. The underwear is small, but the copious amounts of towels used to clean were not.

I spent the early part of the morning covering the couch in plastic (which by the way Brian found very entertaining), getting the bathroom all set up (potty seat on top of big potty, stool ready for hand washing). Brian and I had also made a trip to the Evil Empire the day before to buy lots of salty snacks, sugary drinks and craft supplies! The salty snacks were supposed to make him thirsty and the sugary drinks were supposed to make him drink a lot because he wouldn't be able to quench his thirst. The craft supplies were just because he and I have been having so much fun making crafty things lately and I figured since we were going to be stuck here all weekend, we may as well have something fun to do!


Back to Day 1 though...there were a couple of low points. One was when I removed Brian from the toilet after a long time of sitting and he promptly turned around and peed right on Shawn's leg. Shawn was not happy. His leg got peed on twice yesterday. Like with aim involved.

But by late afternoon we hit a breaking point and has several successes. We lost count of how many, which we considered to be a good thing. We even got a 1/2 success when it came to going poo on the potty! He started to go and I ran him into the bathroom so he could finish on the toilet. The Buzz Light Year underwear stayed dry for a long, long time after the poo success and many candy rewards were consumed.

We found that if we had something in the bathroom to keep him occupied, it helped. The stickers I bought from Walmart helped tremendously! We also read lots of books and did his magnetic puzzle countless times.
However, around dinner time, Mr. Brian decided he was done. D.O.N.E. He just was not himself. He refused to eat (pizza!) and would have NOTHING to do with sitting on the potty. So we made the decision to quit for the day. We put him in a diaper and let him play for an hour before bedtime with no mention of the potty. He returned to his normal, happy self.

He and Shawn played trains and even made a super Cranky the Crane! It was fun to sit and watch them playing together.


That's when I realized that even if potty training wasn't successful, we learned a HUGE lesson this weekend. We learned how important it is to take the time to play with our kid(s), not just for a few minutes here and there, but for a long amount of time when possible. Maybe not even a whole day, but several hours of just being together as a family doing what the kid(s) want to do is really important. This is something I hope we will not soon forget!

At bath time Brian stood to pee in the tub and I grabbed him and put him on the toilet for good measure. After Shawn got him to sleep, we talked and decided to see how Day 2 went and just go with our instincts. I'm pretty sure we both went to bed thinking that the next day would be a fail.

We were wrong! We woke up and Brian stayed dry for almost two hours. Then he had his first accident. We were disappointed, but kept our game faces on and kept offering him water. He drank a lot of water. We also let him watch of his "Curious George" videos. This ended up being a great tool because each episode is a little less than 20 minutes long. So, every time an episode ended, we took him to the potty. He probably peed on the potty 5 times if not more before noon!

Throughout the day he kept drinking water and kept having successes. We even managed to spread out the trips to longer than 20 minutes apart. He got to the point that there was no waiting involved. As soon as he sat on the potty, he peed! We even had another poo success (with all of it making it in the potty this time)! He did pee on me a little en route, but once he was finished going poo, he had to pee a little more and took control by pushing his little part down so he wouldn't get me wet again!

The train play has continued into today. We also watched UK earn a spot in the final four. Go CATS!! Unfortunately Daddy can be a train hog...ha ha ha!!


As I said above Brian had two and a half accidents today, but since we can't count the times he went on the potty, I would say they far outweigh the accidents! He even brought me new underwear to put on him late in the evening (after a successful trip to the potty). I guess he was bored with the other pair! After the half accident, we tried to have him sit on the potty and finish, but he was just too worn out. It has to be taxing to learn such an important skill in such a short amount of time. We started bath time and once again I grabbed him because he was getting ready to pee in the tub. This time, he did not pee at all until he was on the potty! He's doing such a great job!

I have decided to take tomorrow off to give it one more day at home. The only trip out we will have to take is to pick up Max, which should take about 10 minutes. Hopefully we will continue with our success sans Daddy. I sure will miss the help!

We are so, so proud of Brian for his big accomplishment! This is a kid who had never even gone to the bathroom on the potty before last Monday. And really before that he was afraid to even sit on the potty. He has worked so hard! We are not by any means completely there yet, but if he continues to work hard and his learning curve continues to be what it has been for the past two days, we are well on our way to a diaper free house. (At least during the day and at least until JULY!)