potty training woes

The woes are all mine. Colin is doing a great job - he lets me know when he needs to go, he stays dry during naps and at night (though he's still in a pull-up at night, more for our sanity and peace of mind than anything else), all that.

BUT. He still needs help getting up on the toilet, so he can't go alone. He sits on a potty seat with a pee guard and he can't climb up without assistance. He won't direct his pee into the toilet himself so I can't take the pee guard off, unless I want pee spray all over my bathroom.

C wants to stand to pee now. Which is fantastic! Except that he likes to lean back while doing it, so he gets pee everywhere - back of the toilet, then dribbled down his legs and into his underwear.

I hereby relinquish hold of the potty training effort and pass the torch to Scott. He pees standing up, after all, and can pass on all of his wisdom to the next generation.

spring break day 1

When I put the boys to bed last night, I reassured them that they did not need to run in and wake me up in the morning - I'm on spring break, after all! - and that they could play in their room or the living room without alerting me to their status as awake.

This morning, I heard the *slam* of their door, followed by the slapslapslap of kid feet, that usually heralds the arrival of "MOM! I'M AWAKE!" and two big eyes staring at me by my nightstand. Today, though, the rude awakening didn't arrive. What I heard was a muffled sound of hand-held video games from the other room.

When Gavin got up a while later, he joined in the game playing on the other DS (thankyouSam). After a while he was upset by something (not sharing of a game? I dunno, I was in bed!) and I heard him announce "I'm going to get Mommy." Colin answered with "No you can not. Mommy is sleeping."

So Gavin stayed away, and they worked it out. By themselves. As I lay there in bed, I cherished that moment - because I know there will not be another like it for about 7 years - and enjoyed the extended stay in my bed. I didn't get up until 8am!!!!!

After a leisurely morning, it was time to get out of the house for a bit. The boys rode their scooters with me to the park. It was deserted so the kids had the run of the place.

Gavin tried climbing this thing the last time we went to the park, and he was terrified. I climbed it to show him it was okay, and it seemed to help him see that he'd be fine, and ever since he's been more and more sure of himself while climbing it. (I do not like ladders. That thing scares the bejeebus out of me. I'm so glad it's getting easier for him so I do not ever have to climb it, ever again.)

Very proud of himself up at the top!!


Colin still runs with his one arm pumping more than the other. I caught it in action!


They were playing pirates. Like Gavin's pirate "Argh!" face?

Here, after Colin tells us that a pirate says "Arrgh!" I ask him again what a pirate says. I'm looking for him to repeat "Ahoy ladies!" but with no luck. Maybe next time!

Colin's pirate voice is hilarious!

too soon

Tomorrow is Kinder Round-Up in RRISD.

Scott has signed up for a time to go in and register my baby for kindergarten. How is that possible?

I mean, yeah, he turned 5 in December and promptly lost 2 teeth. He can read the Bob books pretty easily. He can count to 100. He is learning to form letters and can already spell words orally (which means he's breaking my code, dammit).

It will be awesome to have him at school with me (he'll travel to my school rather than going to the neighborhood school). I will get to see him more and be more involved. That part, I am so very looking forward to. Also the learning thing. I'm a fan.

But the "being old enough for kindergarten" part? This whole school-age thing? For the birds.

ugh

So work sucked today. Really. I was there for 10 hours (6:30am-4:30pm), which is 2 hours longer than I'm "paid" for (I get there early, and I had a meeting go verrrry long), and it was a rough day in many ways. But I get summers off. Right?

Dinner was not high on my list of priorities today. I mean, it was, in that I was starving by the time I got the boys just before 5pm. And since we had to head back out to Walgreens to pick up a prescription and didn't get home until just shy of 5:30, I was ravenous and about to lose my mind if I didn't eat soon. Scott got home and, lovely man that he is, cooked us some hot dogs before he left to go for a run.

Gavin ate most of his hot dog in the bun and finished it off out of the bun and is now eating his weight in potato chips. Colin drank a whole lot of milk and started in on his chips but I don't think he'll touch that hot dog tonight. Just ask the kids, they'll tell you, their mom is ALL OVER the healthy eating these days.

I hate that I'm so tired from a long ass day at work that I just don't care what they're eating. But... Colin came home in a dry diaper. Gavin helped out with his little brother. They both gave me bunches of hugs and kisses when I picked them up today. I plan to do copious amounts of hugs and snuggles after they finish their horrible, not nutrient-rich dinner. Things could be worse.

successes!

Colin is 2. He will be 3 in February, not entirely 2 months away anymore. I was starting to think the kid would head to kinder in diapers. He just did not seem to care that his diaper was wet or full of a big nasty poop or anything.

We started putting him in pull-ups (left over from Gavin), then underpants when we ran low, last weekend maybe? I watched the clock and sat him down every 30 minutes or less. He would go pee no problem. Yay! But come time to poo? 2-3 times a day I was dumping a nasty turd out of underpants because he never had to go when I had him on the littly potty.

The little potty is currently in the living room - gag - because he was much more amenable to sitting there with the rest of us around. It will move back to the bathroom really very super soon. I hope.

This weekend, we've started having more success. Colin's undies have been dry (and if we go out somewhere and I put him in a diaper, it stays dry too!) pretty much all weekend. He's pooped *in the potty* more than he has out of it, and yesterday he started to go while playing (first floor puddle, fun) but told us and finished on the potty. We're getting there!

Today, while finishing his lunch/playing with his Happy Meal toy at the table (they were good when we went up to my classroom, they got a treat, disgusting but they love it) I ran to the office for a second. Colin yelled "I need to go pee pee potty!" so I ran back, yanked down the undies, and had him sit right down. He needed to pee AND poop, and he did, and it was all in the potty, and I sat there with a big idiot grin so ridiculously awesomely fantastically happy that he'd finally told me he needed to go BEFORE HE WENT.

We are not out of the potty training trenches. Not by a long shot. A looooooong shot, to be certain. Colin is afraid of the big potty (especially public toilets, public restrooms freak him out with the big loud flushes and the noise of the hand dryers and whatnot), so moving to the actual bathroom (and out of the living room) will be a series of steps. Going while out in public? I'm dreading that. It's a necessary hurdle, and one I wish we could jump without having Gavin along for the ride (he can be a cheerleader or a pestering fly, depending on his mood).

But we are making progress, and there is an end in sight to the diapers.

already?

Gavin turned 5 just before Christmas. The very next day, he came into the kitchen saying that his tooth was loose. I didn't believe it, until Scott tried to wiggle it and said that, sure enough, it was loose! I wiggled it myself, and then immediately burst into tears. Already? A loose tooth?

Sometime in the next day or two, I looked into Gavin's mouth at his teeth and noticed that his big boy adult teeth (yes, plural, there were two!) were growing in behind his bottom two teeth. And yes, the other bottom tooth was also wiggly. Holy growing up fast, batman!

Wednesday of this week, Gavin's loosest tooth was super wiggly. Overnight, apparently, it decided it was time, because his tooth fell out in his sleep. Luckily, Scott was able to find the tiny little thing somewhere in the tangle of Gavin's sheets and blankets in the top bunk bed. He put his tooth in the little green tooth chest the dentist gave him just over a week ago and waited through the day patiently to put it under his pillow for the tooth fairy that night.

Last night, the other tooth was barely hanging on. Worried about it also falling out in bed, Scott talked Gavin into letting him yank it out with dental floss. While we were on Skype with Grammy, Scott tied a bit of floss around the tooth and YANK! Nothing. The tooth hung on, the stubborn thing. They decided to try it again, since Gavin is super brave, and YANK! The tooth came out! G said it didn't hurt at all :)

The toothless wonder:

(picture coming soon! I just have to get it off my phone....)

what a difference a year makes!

The boys opened up Day 1 of their lego Star Wars advent calendar today. Watching them put it together with Scott reminded me of Gavin putting together his first item from last year's Lego advent calendar. I had to dig up the pictures and video on my phone, and it was amazing to look at Gavin a year ago. He was 3, almost 4, and wow. Colin was 1, soon to be 2. And still basically bald!

This video is about 2 and a half minutes long. Big Gavin and Colin fans, you can watch the whole thing, but even just the first little bit shows you how different he was and how much they've both grown.

Here's a picture of them putting together this year's calendar. Last year we kept it up on a

dresser to keep Colin out of it, but this year it's on the boys' table in the office. They can get to it to play with it whenever they want.

We have an elf on our shelf! He arrived yesterday and rested his weary self on a speaker in the living room after his long trek from the North Pole. We read all about him, and the boys decided to name him Quincy. I asked Gavin where in the world he heard that name, and he answered that it was on Little Einsteins. I didn't know he watched that show!

Here is a shot of Quincy, comfortably resting in the bathroom while he keeps up with whether the boys are naughty or nice.

After seeing Gavin and Colin in the video from last year, I had to get some video of them this year. Voila....

Did you notice that, according to Colin, Santa says "Yo ho ho!" ??? Pirate Santa!