Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Toy Harvest





Yes, I am one of those parents who often wonders WHY we spend so much time and money on picking out just the right toys for our kids to play with, especially with this (see video) going on at our house these days. And the best part about these "toys" is that when the kids get tired of them, they will end up in a tasty salad with crumbled feta and fresh dressing rather than thrown all over the living room for me to trip on.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Everyone's Favorite Topic: Pottytraining

I can tell you this is NOT my favorite topic lately, but one I am VERY familiar with. Luke will be 2 on September 20th and I've now been training him for about 3 months. Oh. My. Gosh. It's horrible. Well, it's not horrible ALL THE TIME but that's actually what is making it so horrible, because the inconsistency is KILLING ME.

The last two days have been perfect and he's even slept through the night in underwear both nights and woke up dry. Score, right? WRONG! I took him to a friend's house today and he did #2 in his pants. WHAT? He's been SOOOO good with that for the last few weeks - always going right after dinner - and then today he goes at 2pm and NOT after a meal? UGH!

But to make it even worse, I had already used the one pair of underwear I had in the diaper bag for William. Yes, WILLIAM!!! That kid has been trained for about 7 months but just today decided he was too busy to stop playing for 2 minutes. Maybe I should just pack the diaper bag with clothing for all of us, huh?

Anyway, I was thinking about how even after having 4 kids I am still learning every day. With the first two boys, I did what all the experts said which is to train around age 2 1/2. I must say, that was the WORST age to train. Both Owen and Sammy were VERY resistant and it took me a looooong time. I tried again at that age with William but he, too, was resistant. So I gave up and tried again when he was just over 3. It took about a week, so he was definitely the easiest to train.

As frustrated as I am right now, Luke has still been easier than the older two boys were. He "got it" right away so that as long as I take him to the bathroom at regular intervals, he will hold it for me in between trips. And even though there are accidents and some might say that it's ME who's trained, not him, I am definitely not going to put him back in diapers at this point. Just because someone has to walk for the remainder of a marathon, does that mean they should just go back to the starting line? I'll just keep walking, thank you very much.