Potty training

As mentioned in an earlier post, we had decided to take the leap and really focus on getting B potty trained this week. She had been exhibiting signs of readiness before E was born, but we couldn’t focus on it due to E’s impending arrival. Studies say that whenever a big change is coming, you shouldn’t attempt to potty train a toddler because it will be too much for them to handle. Toddlers don’t have all the same resources to cope with stressful things as adults do, and with the addition of a new sibling, it would have been too much for her. She had to adjust to having a baby in the house who cries and needs near-constant attention. She’s also had to adjust to losing some of the time and attention that she got from us. She has done remarkably well. She hasn’t shown any kind of jealousy towards E. She has kind of regressed in her eating (she wants us to feed her again) but she only does that when she’s almost done eating or when she’s sleepy. So anyway, since she has been doing so well with everything (which I’m sure is part of her easy-going temperament that she gets from her dad), we started major potty training this week, after getting home from taking D to school every morning.

On Monday, after we got home and ate breakfast, I put her cotton training pants on her, moved her potty in the kitchen, and we pretty much stayed in there all day. The kitchen/breakfast area is right by the living room, where E’s swing is, so that’s why we did it in there. I couldn’t stay in the bathroom all day when I have E to take care of as well. I also didn’t want to run the risk of her having an accident on my carpet. I already don’t like it, but I didn’t really feel like cleaning pee… B had 3 accidents on Monday before she made it to the potty. I was expecting accidents, so I didn’t get upset with her or anything. I just calmly went to her and explained it all each time so she’d understand what she needed to do. 

On Tuesday, I think she only had one or two accidents and ended up using the potty 3 times. No number 2 yet, just number 1, but I’m okay with that.

On Wednesday, after we started, she had no accidents. I decided to start putting pull-ups on her instead of the cotton pants because she was beginning to understand the sensation of having to pee and wasn’t going in her pants anymore. 

On Thursday, she was still doing great during the day. We haven’t broached the subject of night-time yet, and at this point she is still doing number 2 in her diaper, but she’s doing great.

Friday (today) has been a good day too. She’s doing great with remembering to go potty. She actually did a number 2 in her potty today too! Of course, she didn’t quite finish there… She finished in her pull up later, but hey – it’s a start! 

We’ll probably use this weekend to work on her staying dry at night (which she already does pretty well with by herself) and I feel like she’ll be able to start wearing her big girl panties next week. I’m so excited about that! I’m just so glad that she’s done so well and hasn’t fought about it at all! God has blessed me with such an easy going child! Of course, we’ll see how miss E does when she gets older 😉 I have a feeling she’ll be a little more like me 😛 haha… 

That’s all for now – oh wait! I totally have more craft projects that I’m going to work on soon and I’ll post pictures! And, I am planning to make cupcakes for D’s class on Valentines’ day with super neat different colored cupcakes!! 

Okay, that’s it, I promise 🙂

January ramblings

I love chocolate milk. I think the only reason I felt like starting off like that is because I happened to be drinking a glass of nice, cold chocolate milk. I’m not terribly picky about my chocolate milk (mainly because if it’s got chocolate in it, it’s usually good) but I do prefer the hand made goodness that is Hershey’s chocolate syrup being stirred into a glass of cold 2% milk. Ahhh… it’s the simple things 🙂  

Also, I love the way B says chocolate milk. It’s so cute. I made a cup for her today and she says “choquit milk.” Sounds like chaw-quit… haha.. I love it. 

B has been doing okay with the potty training these last two days. Of course, now that I’ve said that, she’ll probably revert and we’ll have to start ALL over again. When we started yesterday, she had 3 accidents in her cloth training pants and one good tinkle in the potty before we put the diaper back on so she could go to bed. It was okay though. We didn’t get upset about it. I just cleaned up where she messed (we were in the kitchen all day, so no carpet probs – yay) and kept repeating that we needed to hurry to the potty if she felt like she needed to tinkle. And, just so we all know… I don’t say “tinkle” when I talk to her about it. I tell her exactly what it is, I just didn’t think I wanted to see “pee” all over my blog 🙂 This morning, I did try to see if she would go before we left to take D to school, but she didn’t right away, and we didn’t have the time to sit and wait. So, she ended up going in her pull-up before we got back and got situated to start for today. It’s no biggie though. She did have one accident this morning after we got started, but she ended up using the potty 3 times today! Once was a little rough. She’s so used to wearing a diaper that she’s afraid she’s going to get it all over her if she’s not wearing one. The second time was a bit better and the third time was like she just sat down and did it with no fussing at all. I think that maybe, if we keep at it all week, she’ll at least have the Number 1 part down. As for the Number 2…. that’s another story. We’ve been talking about how she needs to do that in the potty as well, but she never went yesterday. I knew she’d need to go today and every time I saw her make a motion to go hide, I asked if she wanted me to put the potty somewhere so I wouldn’t see her. She said no. I took 5 minutes tonight to go get the peas cooking on the stove and that’s when she did it. Luckily, it wasn’t bad. She was wearing a pull-up instead of her cotton training pants, so we just dumped it in the toilet and cleaned up. No probs. I know it will take a little while to get her trained on that one though. It’s usually harder to do. 

I need to find some way to wake myself up in the mornings and get more motivated. Now that I’m at home, I need to start an exercise routine. I feel so blah all the time. I don’t get enough rest and part of that is my fault and the other part is because I am still breastfeeding some and my baby doesn’t quite sleep through the night yet. I tell ya, the whole breastfeeding thing was a different go-round this time. D and B were great. I was able to go 4 months with D and 3 months with B without having to supplement any type of formula. The only reason I had to start supplementing formula was because I had started back to school and work and my pumping schedule didn’t match their feeding schedules so my supply dwindled. With E, I thought it was going to be better, even easier. She started off so much better. She didn’t have any problems latching and it seemed like she would nurse for at least 10 minutes per side. I never felt full after feeding her, but I guess she never really was as efficient as she should have been. According to the doctor’s scales, by the time she was a month old, she was still 4 ounces lower than her birth weight. That’s a little low. Usually, they are at or over it by then. I had to start adding a couple of ounces of formula after every feeding. Now, luckily, I do still breastfeed. If/when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she doesn’t get a bottle. During the day, I will nurse her for as long as she wants to nurse and if she’s still hungry, I’ll make her a bottle too. She’s doing well with it. She still enjoys nursing and I am very glad that I can still do it for her. I know that I’ve just had way to much stress and my body has just decided that it’s going to combat all the stress by not producing enough supply to feed my baby… So, I’m working with what I’ve got. I try to stay hydrated and I’ve taken supplements to help increase my supply. I don’t know that it works all that well, but as long as I’m still able to nurse her, I will do it. I enjoy this time. 

E is so much more vocal than either D or B were at this age too. She will just coo at me all the time. It’s so precious, especially when she’s nursing. She’ll be eating and looking at me and she’ll just stop and smile and start cooing. I love it!! 

Back to the need for motivation… I love how sidetracked I can get 🙂

I really really want and need to get an exercise routine going, but I don’t really know what to do. I loathe the gym and treadmills. Did you see my verb usage there? I didn’t say hate. I LOATHE them. I guess I probably wouldn’t feel too bad about them if I had the energy required to maintain a membership. I have no energy. I don’t just sit around all day long doing nothing. I have enough energy to make sure my kids are taken care of and that I’ve got supper cooked and dishes washed and clothes washed. I just don’t really have the energy to do anything else. I’d really love if I could catch a nap every day. E usually naps around noon-ish, after she’s eaten, but B won’t lay down unless you make her. She still needs to take naps, but I can’t fight with her about them. I think I would have more energy in the afternoons/evenings if I could catch a 1-2 hour nap. Maybe 🙂 

I need to exercise so I can get back in shape. I have the hardest time trying to get back in shape after having kids…. Ugh!! It’s so funny. When I was pregnant with B and when I was pregnant with E, I started off being way heavier than I should have been. When I was pregnant with D, I was about 15 pounds over my lowest high school weight, and then I gained 40 pounds with him. I was never able to lose it all. When I got pregnant with B, I was about 20 pounds heavier than my starting point with D (meaning 35 pounds heavier than my high school weight) but I only gained 20 pounds during that pregnancy. With E, I was about 10 pounds heavier than my starting point with B (meaning 45 pounds heavier than my high school weight) and I probably only gained a total of 10-15 pounds with her. I had basically the same ending pregnancy weight with all three kids, and I have yet to be able to lose it at all. It seems like the only time I lost weight was when I was pregnant! Yeah, I’m not quite ready to go through that again… yet.

Argh… I know that losing weight would be a bit easier if I got enough sleep, so since it’s so close to midnight here…. I might ought to hit the sack!

Staying Home…

Tomorrow is supposed to be my first official day back to work after being out these last 12 weeks…. 12 weeks!! I canNOT believe that it has already been 12 weeks. My sweet baby was 12 weeks old yesterday and will be 3 months old next Sunday!! AHHHH!! Where has the time gone?! Well, on the plus side – I am getting to stay home with my babies. Yay! At least, we’re definitely giving it a go. I turned in my badge and key to work 2 days before B’s birthday. I wanted to leave in a way that would be okay for me to come back if the $$ didn’t work out for me to stay home anymore. 

So, I started selling Avon (and if you know anyone who uses it or would use it – hook a sista up 🙂 haha!) and I’ve made a few sales with it. Some ladies who work over off Wall Street with hubby may hopefully turn out to be pretty good customers. I do not expect to sell enough to completely replace the money I was making at work, but I figure any money that I can bring in would be great. 

I started doing some crafty type things that I’ve been seeing on Pinterest during some of my time off. During Christmas, I made some really cute ice cream cone Christmas trees with the kids. I don’t have a picture on here I can post, but they were very fun to make and tasted good too! I made a couple of Valentine’s Day wreaths for my mom. I’ve made wreaths before and I would love to make more of them, but it costs a good bit of money for the supplies and I can’t just make them if I don’t have anyone that would buy them. The Valentine’s Day wreaths I made were made with stuff I still had on hand at home. 

The first Valentine’s Day wreath

The second Valentine’s Day wreath

I also did some furniture stuff. Unfortunately, I have no “before” pictures so you can’t see how in need of this refurbishing they were. The girls had a white dresser in their room that has been in my family for a long time. There was nothing really special about it or anything, but mom used it for all of us when we were little and it’s a great little dresser. I took some off-white paint and repainted it, then I put a metallic glaze on it to make it look a little antiqued. Got new hardware from Hobby Lobby (I’m in love with that place!!) and Voila!

The finished product!

 

D had a desk in his room and I cannot for the life of me remember where it came from. It was a really awful yellow color, but it was pretty sturdy and it’s a good size. I decided I wanted to do it in a brown color so it would match the stuff in his room. I sanded it down good and went ahead and put a coat of the off-white paint on it. Then I used another metallic glaze in a burnt brownish-copper color.

Dylan’s finished desk

M had her birthday the day after B turned 3, so I made her a present from an idea I found on Pinterest (my new fave place!). It is a picture frame that I spray painted navy blue and then glitter spray painted. I stapled/hot-glued a piece of burlap fabric on which I had painted an “M” to the back of the frame. I made a felt flower (so cute) and glued it to the corner. It’s an earring hanger! I would love one myself, but I don’t have any really artsy looking earrings to hang on it. M has a lot of really pretty, artsy, eclectic looking jewelry and I thought it would look really great with her earrings on it as not just a functional piece but a stand-alone art piece as well. I hope she liked it!

Earring holder!

I have some other craft stuff I want to do (one is making birds nest jewelry!) but I don’t know that I have the time and $$ to invest in them right now. Pinterest has been a great friend to me lately! 

Speaking of Pinterest, I have also found some great new recipes for my crock-pot on there! I have been wanting to use my crock pot more, and get out of having to cook for 3 hours or so in the evenings. Now, I can throw my entree in the crock pot around noon-1ish and have it cooking for the afternoon and just make a couple of sides and dinner is done! And hubby gets to take some for lunch to work the next day, so that saves a little $$ here and there. 

My next big project is getting B potty trained. She has been showing signs of readiness for about 9 months now and about 6 months ago, we started working on it with her. We never forced anything and she used the potty a few times. After E was born, we stopped. We knew that it would take her some time to get adjusted to having a new sibling and having less mommy-all-to-herself time, and potty training would have just been harder. She is still adjusting to the new changes, but she’s doing well and the only potty readiness sign that she is not displaying is the whole “not liking to be in wet/dirty diapers” sign. She could care less if you changed her diaper. She’ll tell you if she’s wet or poopy, but she has no problem staying in it all day. It’s gross, but that just means we’re going to have to work really hard to get it going. I plan to spend the majority of the day tomorrow working on potty training. After taking D to school, we’ll come home and I’ll put a pair of cotton training pants on her and bring her potty chair into the kitchen and just have her be in the kitchen all day. I’m thinking about giving her a penny every time she pees and 2 pennies if she poops. She likes to put money in her piggy bank, so we’re going to see how that works.

I’m very grateful that God is providing for us and allowing me to stay home right now. To be completely honest, since I had changed positions at work, I was enjoying my job a lot more than I used to. Yeah, it was still hectic, and I still didn’t like that it was so stressful, but I actually felt like what I did made a difference. I even got employee of the month for August! I was really good at it and it’s something that I could enjoy doing. But, the cost of childcare for 3 kids was just going to be too much right now and I really wanted to be here for my babies as much as I could. I hope that I can be the mom I need to be and we can still make it work with me being home. 

Anyway, it’s getting a little late now, so I’d better hit the sack 🙂