Flash Back - Des Moines Waterpark with the Williams

I was looking through pictures and realized I hadn't ever posted pictures from our Des Moines Zoo / Waterpark trip.  What a great little get away to take with little ones.  The waterpark at the hotel is perfect for their size and of course the zoo is always fun.  We skipped out on the Living History Farms this year :) and loved our trip.  I don't think I have ever been in this many pictures before and in the whole album of hundreds of pictures, there are none of Matt.  He was there, just for the record.  Love hanging out with good friends and our little fam...

Night Life

So Eliott has gone through this thing lately where he is freaked out about being in his room at night.  In desperation the other night, after him walking into our room probably 20 times (no exaggerating), I finally held the door shut until he gave up and fell asleep in Madison's bed (Madison had gotten into our bed since she obviously couldn't sleep either).  This has worked in the past, but for some reason this time it just made it worse (and made me feel terrible) and the next several bed and nap times he freaked out about the word 'bed' and would say over and over 'no bed, no bed, leave door open'... so sad.  So, the other night I tried something new... putting him in bed with his sleeping sister.  I wasn't sure if she was going to be ok with this, but she was sleeping and I was desperate.  They both slept great until at 6:50 in the morning Eliott was crying because he had fallen and was stuck between the bed and the wall.  I helped him get back out and he snuggled back in next to sis and immediately fell back asleep until 8:00 or so.  So sweet.  Since Madison's bed isn't big enough for my two night time movers, tonight we rearranged their room so their beds are next to each other.  As I type, they are in there jabbering to each other as they lay in bed.  Madison is doing most of the 'teaching' and Eliott is following most of her comments up with either a 'Ya', or the last few words of whatever her sentence was.  I have heard her tell him a few times that he needs to stay in bed and one time he got down and then got back up after she told him to get back in bed (joy).  I am laughing at some of the conversation that is happening...

Madison - "Some people, big people, like Mommy and Daddy, people who can drive around, they get to stay up longer"
T - "Stay up longer?"

Madison - "Mommy helps Daddy and Daddy helps Mommy, because, well, Mommy isn't very good about fixing stuff."
T - "Fixing stuff?"

Ha... We'll still see if I'm laughing at midnight :)

Now she is singing to him telling him he needs to be quiet... he is chattering away.

Ending to the night drama... Madison walks out and tells me "T's being silly".  I ended up caving and laid in there until Eliott fell asleep.  Madison will be drifting off shortly.  Oh the things I have done for sleep :).

Trick or Treating

We continued this year with our two year tradition with our Bible Study family.  We headed out to Hudson, enjoyed some dinner, got dressed up (all of us) and headed around the Hudson Heights circle. This year was the first year that I didn't get to pick the costume... Madison was set on being a princess from day one.  Eliott actually wanted to be a princess too :), but we then convinced him that he was more suitable as a prince.  Then we changed it to a frog (for the princess and the frog), but ended up going with this cute and cozy giraffe costume.  Right before we headed out, Stacey comes up with several adult-sized costumes and I immediately took the clown.  I never looked in the mirror and after looking at the pictures I now know why my husband was embarrassed to walk with me and my kids looked at me like they had never seen me before.  On the plus side... it was plenty roomy for this growing belly of mine and for awhile I forgot I was preggo :).

We had 'practiced' trick-or-treating' many times at home so the kids both new what they were supposed to do and say as they knocked on the door.  The first door we walked up to, our two kids were in the back of the pack, checking out the situation before they jumped in.  Madison, not being one to jump right into something new, hesitated as all the kids in front of her grabbed the goods out of the big bucket.  She turned around, looked at me, and dead serious says, "Mom... I want some."  It was as if she wasn't sure what to say or do, new she didn't want to talk to anyone she didn't know, but the pull of that big bucket of candy was just to much to keep her in her shell.  I told her that all she needed to do was walk up there and she would get some... she braved it and was pretty pumped about the whole situation.  Let's just say she warmed up quickly to the idea and was skipping through yards and grabbing gobs of candy by the end.

Eliott was quite the trooper as well.  He was ready and rarin' to go at 6:00 and was keeping up with the big kids.  He was a little small to barge through the crowd and had a hard time finding the front of the pack.  The first several houses he tried to give candy from his pumpkin back to the person at the door, but he also caught on quite quickly.  He walked most of the way and stayed with the crew up until the very end when he found a spot in the Williams' stroller with a big tootsie pop... and was pretty content.

We ended the night checking out our loads of candy and a couple of happy, worn-out kids... and clown and race car driver :)

Potty Training... oh my

This is a much much overdue post but I debated several times whether or not this was going to be something to blog about or not :).  Eliott decided that going potty was pretty interesting when he was 20 months or so.  He would watch big sis jump up there and a few times here or there would give it a try himself, usually right before bath time.  The potty training 'method' I used with Madison claimed that potty training was ideal at the age of 22 months, even with boys, since they are old enough to know what's going on yet not into their two's yet.  So.... I thought I'd give it a whirl.  The week before Labor Day weekend, the kids and I gathered some at-home activities and committed the next three days to sticking around the house while we stripped Eliott of his diaper and let him wander the house in a t-shirt.  Day one... dream child.  He went a few times down his leg, but seemed to figure it out quickly and headed to the potty for almost the whole day, even a #2 to brag about.  I thought to myslef, 'Wow, that was incredible'.  Well, day two was not quite a good and day three, a disaster.  He managed to poop on the floor several times and rarely made it to the bathroom to go.  Now I was stumped on what to do.  I was not a fan of cleaning up pee, but poop really makes me want to quit.  I said from the the beginning that I was not going to do this 'half-way' stuff... either he was going to have it figured out or we were going to head back to diapers and try again another day.  The problem I had was he was already waking up from naps dry, so I knew his body was starting to figure it out.  Plus, I have a hard time quitting what we had worked so hard on for three days.  I told Matt that I we would attempt to head back to life slowly and see what happened.  I wanted to give it through labor day and then make a decision.

So Friday night we headed to K-Mart to pick out some big boy undees.  I figured we needed to do it with Eliott so he would get excited about the whole deal.  This was a rough point... as we headed through the aisles looking for a 3T underwear, Matt looks over and T is peeing in the aisle at K-Mart without a care in the world.  He actually didn't quite miss a beat.  I thought to myslef, "What in the heck am I doing!?".  Well, I am a woman of my word.  We bought the underwear and I committed to sticking it out for the weekend.  Well, one package of undees was definitely not enough as I spent quite a bit of time changing underwear... the potty accidents didn't bother me too much but when he missed a #2, I was having a hard time with my decision.

Too make a much longer story shorten up, someone must have told T that he had until Monday because by Monday accidents were few and far between.  More importantly (to me) he had figured out when his #2's were coming and has yet to this day had poop in his pants (joy).

Since then, he has had one day of relapse although sometimes has a tiny bit of potty in his underwear before he makes it to the potty.  He is very do-it-himself at this whole process and usually takes his whole bottoms off, climbs up backwards on our 'tall' toilet and does his business... often without saying a word to me.  I am very proud of this little man and so thankful to have a brief moment in time of no diapers (except at night).  'sigh'... :)