Potty Training

At 8:50 this morning mission potty training commenced. I read my daughter a book called "No More Diapers for Me!" (included flushing button which she thought was a car). We had baby Ella take off her diaper, go tinkle, and put on pretty undies. Jo tried to go potty (but didn't) and we put on super cool Nemo undies. She guzzled two juice boxes and ate a sucker and a tootsie roll - she didn't even have to eat breakfast first. It was so fun. I was jumping up and down and clapping and showing true enthusiasm for this wonderful day. I asked her AT LEAST every 5 minutes if she was dry, if she wanted to go to the potty, if she needed anything at all to make this day any more wonderful. And between 8:50 and 10:15 my 28 month old wet her newly acquired panties 3 times, pooped in them once, and was in full blown tears because of all the pee on her legs. She asked for a diaper back 3 times. So I held up panties and diapers and let her pick, reminding her that she only gets treats and juice if she wears panties. She picked the diaper. She just wants to play without constantly having wet things all over her. I can appreciate that. Does anyone have any advice for me? Do we do this every morning until she catches on? Do I give it a week or a month? Should I do something differently? She wakes up dry every morning and has gone tinkle and poop in the potty in months past. I thought she was ready for the boot camp of bowel control. I really wanted this to be an empowering day where SHE got to choose which undies to wear and SHE got to choose when to eat treats and drink juice and SHE got to tell me when she needed to go potty and flush and wash her hands. What is not totally exciting about this for a 2 year old who LOVES power and is usually denied it by nature of her age? For the love!

2 things I've learned.

1. It's kind of strange but mostly funny how children want to change their babies' and animals' diapers. It's extremely uncomfortable when they want to change MY diaper, especially in a public place.

2. Also uncomfortable when they just "check" to see if I'm poopy, which means looking down my pants. Awkward at home - ten times more awkward with others around.

A matter of business.

Facebook. I don't know how, I don't know when, and I don't know why. But somehow I created an account. A facebook account. Normally creating an account to something doesn't change your world. But a facebook account does. Daily I get emails. Dozens of people wanting me to be thier friend and a gazillion messages I haven't read and photos to see. They want me. The people want me. But the truth is, it was all an accident. This accident has brought me great popularity, yes. But it is not my favorite mistake. I don't know how to use facebook. I don't want to. I blog. And not terribly often. I don't have the time to keep up with so many friends. Forgive me if you are one of the people wishing to be my facebook friend. I don't know how to reject you. But consider yourself rejected.

In the end he was small.

I just killed a huge spider. I'm sure it must have been a wolf spider because that's what all of the really big ones around here are, right? It was brown. It was huge. Shudder.

I smashed it against the wall with my flip flop. "How did she do this?" anyone who knows me well would ask (nothing short of a true, full blown phobia going on here). Lots of support from lots of people. Spider therapy from my husband. And to top it off, a very good insight from Grandma. I found a spider in her sink a few weeks ago and didn't know what to do. She walked in, got some toilet paper and squished it. I asked how she could do that with such a big spider and she opened the toilet paper and said, "But look how small it is."

She was right spiders are small after you smash their legs and guts and kill the life out of them. So that's how I did it. I thought about how small that disgustingly huge hairy brown thing would be after he was crushed. And, I assure you, he was indeed small.

*I just tried to google "brown spider" to give you a picture to look at. DO NOT DO THIS. You can't smash a picture of a spider and make it small. I had to close the web after 4 seconds. Shudder.
Instead I give you what the demon looked like after I was done with him. In the end, they are all small.

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Working on the Vocab Words

Guess who's been learning these new words/phrases:

No
Don't
Not
Can't
Won't
No way
Stop doing
I don't think so
That's enough
Stay

Some more hints: I love her... she's really cool... she's angry a lot... especially when her animals fall over after she's carefully lined them up. If I were going to pick someone she's similar to tonight it would be... Kelly Clarkston singing Since you've been gone... "Shut your mouth I just can't take it!" That would be her tonight.

Right Now...

My attractive husband is at a recording studio making a CD of my favorite songs including "How sweet it is" which he sang to me at our wedding and "Wrapped up in you" which he sang at my bridal shower. I am excited to get my hands on this CD. Then I will play it all day long, even when he's at home. Then he'll ask me to turn it off. I will tell him he's way better than James and Michael and he'll just smile and kiss me:) Did I mention he'll kiss me? Yeah, I'm excited for that. I know that once your married the idea of a single kiss is not supposed to make you get all tingly, butterfly excited like. But the thing is, he's going to give me that smile first. And that smile just kind of makes me melty and I start saying things like, "You want chips and salsa, sure I'll get that... don't move... a foot massage?.... love to.....babe." And I'll call him babe over and over again and we'll just get super annoying to everyone, even our kids who don't even know their ABC's yet. Not even out of diapers yet. Even they'll get annoyed. It's going to be awesome. I love when we're all lovey dovey and everyone hates it. You just gotta understand- that smile + that kiss = SERIOUSLY SO BLESSED. So we can't help it:) Avoid us like the plague for 2.73 weeks.

*FYI: We will be selling copies of the CD for free if anyone is in need of some sweet music.

Wanted: Behavior Counseling for Father