Ethan goes pee on the potty!

Yesterday Ethan went pee pee on the potty (SUCH mom language, I know)! We've sat him on the little potty a couple of times after bath before and nothing happened. However, he's been very interested in other people going potty recently. Especially his friend Luke who was potty trained recently. When we were at their house on Friday, he followed Luke to the potty every time he had to go.

So anyway, yesterday morning was a lazy morning and Ethan had his jammies on for a while. He then started trying to take them off (which I helped him do). So then he was in just his diaper. And then he wanted to take off his diaper, which he never does, and fought me when I tried to get it back on him. Then he said something about potty, so I tried to put him on the potty downstairs, which he doesn't like (Blythe never liked that potty either...it's practically never been used). So, he was acting like he wanted to go on the potty upstairs. So I took him upstairs (all the while very concerned he was going to pee or poop all over the place). He got the potty out of the bathroom, picked it up, and acted like he wanted to bring it downstairs. I didn't let him and instead let him bring it to his room while I picked out clothes for him (hoping I could dress him and that would keep his diaper on). Next thing I know, he hops up from the potty and I look in there and he had gone! He was so happy with himself.

So a good accomplishment for Ethan! Not only that, but later before bed I got him undressed and he again acted like he needed to go. So he went and sat on his potty and again he went! Yay!

All that said, this does not mean we are starting to potty train. I do remember back when Blythe was about this age and we started putting her on the potty occasionally. She went every time we put her on it. So we thought potty training would be a breeze, which it was not (though she wasn't too terribly hard). But we are one small step in the right direction. There is hope of potty training before #3 gets here!

The Devil Wears Truck Jammies

Braden is currently out of town for a swim meet. On Wednesday, Blythe's daily sheet at school said she was "Grumpy" and "Tired". Then yesterday, Ethan's sheet said he was "Grumpy". Coincidence? I think not. I think they miss their Daddy.

As you can see from yesterday's post, Blythe continued being grumpy and tired after she got home. Ethan wasn't grumpy that day, but the second we walked through the door at home he became the devil child. Apparently this continued all the way through the school day yesterday, but ended when we were at Blythe's gymnastics class because he could play with his friend Luke. Unfortunately the second he got separated from Luke after class, he became the devil child again. Nothing a little McDonald's can't fix, right? Wrong. Screamed in McDonald's. Didn't want his chicken nuggets. Didn't want his apples. Only wanted Mommy's ice cream. So he screamed "ICE CREAM!" "IIIICCCCEEE CREEEAMMM!!!" "ICE CCCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMM!" SO embarrassing. So I gave him some ice cream (Blythe too) thinking after that was out of sight, maybe he would eat his dinner. Nope. So basically Blythe and I both had to eat really fast so we could get out of there as quickly as possible.

Then he screamed in the car most of the way home.

I know what you're thinking. I was thinking it too. This would be the PERFECT night to switch him from the comforts and safety of his crib/toddler bed into his new big boy bed in his new big boy room. I mean, seriously, what was I smoking last night? But I moved over his monitor and his sound machine, and his books so he would be forced to sleep in that bed no matter what.

We sat in his new bed and read some stories, which he was fine with. And then I said, "now it's time to go to sleep". So he got out of his bed and went to the hall and started to walk to his old room. So I scooped him up and brought him back to his new room where I tried to force him to stay in his new bed, but he was screaming and crying. Finally I got up and left the room and closed the door with him screaming and crying at the door. I felt bad, but he was just going to have to wear himself out.

I went and tucked Blythe in and spent some time with her and once the crying stopped I went back into his room, hoping to find him asleep on the floor so I could just put him in bed. But I found him half asleep on the step stool up to his bed, so I tried to put him in bed again and again he fought, but this time he was much too tired. So finally he fell asleep on me and then after a while, I was able to move him off and leave the room.

But he did great. He did not fall out of bed and slept until normal time this morning. I had told Blythe last night to go into Ethan's room when she woke up this morning because he might not know where he is. She did exactly as I asked. Such a good big sister! And then when I went in there, I hyped it all up that he slept in his new big boy bed and he seemed very pleased with himself. SO - let's hope tonight goes a little smoother.

Oh, for the love...

Every now and then, I kind of second-guess our decision to have a 3rd.

Ethan's shoes

Ethan is quite particular about his shoes these days. Used to be that I would put him in his Nike tennis shoes almost every day. Sometimes the brown "church" shoes if he was wearing khakis or something nice.

But nowadays he refuses to wear the Nike shoes. I will ask him to go get his shoes and every time (if they are in the basket), he will bring back his brown sandles that were hand-me-downs from his friend Luke. He will hand them to me and say "Yook". When it's only 50 degrees out, sandals aren't quite practical, but if he finds them he MUST wear them, so socks and sandals it's been. They don't quite fit with socks though. So now I must hide them.

This means when he searches for shoes, he will then bring back the brown "church" shoes, also hand-me-downs from Luke. So again, he will bring them to me and say "Yook". Since he was wearing a football jersey and matching football sport pants this morning, brown church shoes really would look ridiculous. So I tried to force the Nikes. But he was NOT having it. He would grab them from me and throw them across the room.

Fortunately he had some tennis shoes in his closet that were a size bigger that were hand-me-down's from Frank (our next door neighbor). So these were perfectly fine to wear. And then he would point at his shoes and say "Fank".

Lesson learned - he only likes hand-me-downs. So if I do buy him new shoes, I just need to tell him they were someone else's.

12 weeks 5 days ultrasound

I had an ultrasound this morning as part of the "quad" test to test for down syndrome and other things. This was new for me - the last 2 pregnancies they only did ultrasounds at 7 weeks and at about 18 weeks, but I guess things continue to change and progress medically. So anyway, I'm 12 weeks and 5 days along. All looked good on the ultrasound. Baby is measuring at 13 weeks 1 day along, so appears I'm on my way to another large baby.

Confirmed baby has 2 legs and 2 arms (always good). Brain looks good, as does heart, bladder, blood flow, etc. We were even able to count all 10 fingers on the baby.

And I had more blood drawn for more tests (results in 7-10 days). Always fun to do that!

So, everything appears to be right on track. I'm almost at the end of my first trimester and unfortunately the nausea still has not gone away. 6 weeks of nausea is not fun. According to my very accurate bathroom scale, I have gained about 8 pounds. That's high for a "regular" person on the first trimester, but low for me (I think). Appears you can still gain weight even if nothing ever sounds good to eat.

Anyway, here are a couple of pics from the ultrasound. On the second one, you can see baby waving (and you can see all 5 fingers).

Sickly weekend

Ah, the joys of having a sick child. I got the daycare call on Friday that Ethan had a fever. I wasn't really surprised since he hadn't eaten much on Thursday night or Friday morning, so I had the sneaky suspicion he might be getting sick.

Once he got home and had some Tylenol, he started to feel much better and played and acted somewhat normal and even ate okay at dinner. But Saturday morning I went in his room and saw he had thrown up in his bed (and on the carpet) and on himself. And he had a fever again. And he was coughing. Poor guy. Again, after he had some Tylenol he acted almost normal. Throughout the day you could tell he didn't feel well, but still played outside and interacted pretty well. Then Sunday he woke up with a fever again. And I think he threw up a little, but it was mostly mucus. And he had the chills and looked downright miserable. Later in the day he started looking like he was feeling better, but by nightime the fever had returned. So there was no sending him to school today. Fortunately he slept much better last night and had no fever this morning or at all today, so looks like he is on the mend. He still has a very small appetite, which is unusual for him. So, based on all the symptoms, if I had to guess I'd say he has the flu. Whether it's H1N1, I don't know. He hasn't been vaccinated for seasonal or H1N1.

Anyway, I'm praying his sister doesn't get it since she spent the whole weekend with him, and it's impossible to keep them from putting things in their mouths and from switching drinks, etc. And of course hoping I don't get it (though I have been vaccinated for H1N1).

Nail clipping

Blythe actually asked me yesterday to cut her nails because they were getting too long. Apparently this means she has stopped biting her nails! Fingernails, that is. If only we could get her to stop biting her toenails.

And since Blythe was WANTING her nails cut, Ethan then wanted his cut too. Unfortunately I had just done his a few days ago (except Ethan wasn't exactly willing to at the time, so it was a typical torturous nail clipping session). Next time I want to cut his, now I know to get Blythe to ask to have hers done first.

Now, if only we could get Ethan to stop biting....his sister and his friends....then we might have a real breakthrough.

Grams visits

Grams (aka Braden's mom) came to visit us last Thursday and stayed until yesterday. We had asked her to come and help since my work and Braden's work both got pretty crazy at the same time, plus I had a baby shower to go to in Charlotte on Saturday (while Braden had a meet here in Blacksburg). She was a HUGE help while she was here. Currently all the kids clothes are washed AND put away and the kids rooms are actually clean. Wait, they trashed Ethan's room this morning. So - Blythe's room is actually clean.

I had 2 projects on Friday going live and Braden had a meet, so I was so glad she was here as I was trying to troubleshoot at 7:00pm. I would have been getting mad at the kids for not letting me work if that were not the case. Saturday, I drove down to Charlotte in the morning to attend a baby shower for my good friend Sue (Blythe's godmother), who is expecting her first in just a few weeks! The weather was great so we had a good time just hanging out after the shower and catching some rays before I drove back to Blacksburg that evening. Meanwhile, Grams was here with the kids and they went to the swim meet at the end so the kids could swim in a swim clinic. Ethan didn't really want to swim, but apparently Blythe did great. Then they headed over to a team dinner and it was back home and they were TIRED (Grams included!).

Sunday was gorgeous out, so we took the opportunity to clear out the garage so Braden can now park his car in there (and just in time for the 3 days of rain).

Thanks to Grams for coming to help out! We'll miss you!

Ethan's new room

After we found out we were expecting, we started working on Ethan's new room. Since we only wanted to decorate a nursery once, we originally decorated it in gender-neutral colors with farm animal theme. It's starting to grow a little old on me, but we sure aren't going to redecorate it, so we live with the farm animals. Also to make it "girly" we put a pink changing pad cover on and switched the lamp shade to pink. When Ethan was born, we switched them to blue cover and blue lampshade. And that's the extent of the redecorating for that room.

Ethan's new room used to be the guest room. We now moved the guest room to the basement where it is a guest room/exercise room. We also kicked the dogs out of that room in the basement. It's better to have the guest room down there anyway as that room has it's own bathroom, so guests no longer have to remove the 50+ toys from the tub and figure out how to get the bathtub in shower mode without removing the duck tub faucet cover. They also get real towels instead of duck towels.

So, after we cleared out the guest room upstairs, we painted the room blue. We already had the humongous headboard that we had made for the guest room up on the wall and it was way too big for a queen bed (because we never measured it when we made it), we thought we should keep it up and set up a bed against the wall kind of like a day bed. Turns out the headboard is even a little bigger than the long side of a twin bed. But not by too much. We didn't really want to get a day bed since we wanted the option to turn the bed later, so instead we opted for 2 headboards that we put on each side. We bought them unfinished, so 2 weeks of staining, drying, polyurethane, drying, sanding, etc and they were ready to attach.

In the meantime, Braden started hanging all the penants that he has gotten for Ethan. They are now out of the nursery, where they never belonged, and into the cool boy's room where they are much more fitting.

So here is the almost finished product:

I still need to get a couple of large baskets to hold toys and books and we're going to put more shelves in the closet. After that, he'll be ready to move in.

Halloween

This year's Halloween was a good one. We started the day with a neighborhood Halloween event at lunchtime that had food, games, face painting, and playing on the playground in our costumes so they could get dirty and Mom would have to clean them. It started to rain a little just at the end, actually while we were on our way home.

Ethan went down for a nap just as Gommy, Poppa, and Laura arrived. Blythe had no nap, so we were a little worried how she would hold up, but lots of candy seemed to do the trick (but made for a hard crash later in the night).

As the day wore on, we started to get prepped for the night. Braden carved 3 more pumpkins to say B-O-O and hung up a few more Halloween lights I forgot we had. He also made himself into Wolverine using foil-covered chopsticks and some face paint. Here's our finished product of our front porch (and of course, we also had scary music playing).

Gommy did Blythe's hair in a french twist and she got to wear a little bit of makeup. A crown and a dress, and whollah - Cinderella.

A far cry from last year's scary skeleton.

Ethan also got to wear makeup (face paint that is) to become a scary (okay, cute) tiger.

Here's another cute one of the 2 of them

Ethan was tired of taking pics and really wanted to start his trick or treating, so I think we were the first ones out in the neighborhood, but others soon followed. The rain held off for trick-or-treating and both kids made it all the way around the outer and inner circles of the neighborhood and gots lots of candy. We managed to get rid of all 3 large bags of candy we bought. Needless to say, both kids were quite tired!

As is typical of Fall Back (i.e. end of Daylight Savings), we had a great night of sleep on Saturday night. Then this morning Blythe was up at 6:15am. Just can't win.