No more diapers!

Well, at least during the day.  Brynn has been potty training this week.  She's been very interested in the potty recently, so I wanted to capitalize and thought this week was good since Blythe is still in school (so I only have to ignore 1 kid while we potty train).  Our theme this week has been "Transportation-Wheels" but I guess should have been "poopy and tee tee".  Ethan has played with his cars a lot by himself, so I guess that counts, right?

We started as soon as we got back from Cashiers on Monday.  I had been taking her potty all weekend, though still had her in diapers (didn't want to actually make the move until the 5 hour car trip was over).  We went out to Outback for dinner on Monday (because we had a gift certificate).  Even without potty training, Brynn is not good at restaurants, so we rarely go.  She went through 2 pair of undies while there.

So Tuesday was officially the first full day.  And she had ZERO accidents!  Granted we were home most of the day and she was pantless most of the day, but she even stayed dry through naptime.  Wow!

Wednesday was almost as good.  She even pooped on the potty in the morning, though I wouldn't say she was a fan of that new process.  She did not stay dry through naptime and then a little while after, peed on the floor, but stopped and told me she had to go potty.  So not bad, though still pantless most of the day.

Yesterday was pretty good.  Again wet during nap, but otherwise did great.  Wore undies most of the day and was telling me when she had to go.  I could tell she needed to poop, but just didn't want to.

Today she did great again!  We went to the Sesame Street Live show this morning and she held it for hours but stayed dry and told me all day when she needed to go.  However, I knew she REALLY needed to poop, but just wouldn't do it.  I started calling her the "Girl who cried poop" because she kept telling me, we kept going to the potty, and then nothing.  Probably happened 100 times over yesterday and today. After a while she was in pain.  Didn't want to push, but didn't want to get off the potty.  We sat like this for at least half an hour.

She was back in underpants later and took the opportunity while neither Braden or I were in the room to poop in her pants.  It was ginormous and probably took a lot of pushing.  So that's still a work in progress.  What was impressive though was that she didn't wet herself through all that pushing.  Instead she waited until I cleaned her up then told me she had to go and then peed on the potty.  So I think we're already there on #1!  Very impressed with my baby.

Week in pictures

1. Blythe and Ethan riding the caterpiller ride at the "Got to be NC" Festival at the fairgrounds.  Ethan said this was his favorite ride.
2. Ethan after a (semi-successful) trip to Walmart.  Hey - he's still smiling, so can't be that bad.
3. Grams and Peep chillin in a raft on Lake Keowee during our trip to Cashiers
4. Juni wears a toddler size 5 shoe and a 2T shirt (in case you need to know)
5. Art!  Painting the plates used to hold the paint.
6. Before they painted the plates, we painted pig noses.  Aren't they the cutest little pigs?
7. The boats at Pullen Park
8.  Happy Birthday to Brynn!  Ready to open some presents!
9.  Look at my sandy hands!  Sand castle building at Lake Keowee.

Brynn is 2!

Hard to believe, but my baby is 2 years old.  She should be starting her terrible 2 tantrums any day now.  Kidding actually, she started those suckers at least 3 months ago.

Sorry, Brynn, but maybe because you are the 3rd child, or maybe just the circumstances this year, but you didn't really get a party.  We had Doug, Lynette, Ada, and Harper over on Brynn's birthday.  Ethan, Ada, and Brynn helped me bake a cake earlier in the day that we decorated with sprinkles.  We had no balloons. No streamers.  No theme.  Just some cake and some leftover birthday napkins from Blythe's party.  I did buy ice cream, but forgot to get it out for everyone to eat.  But she's 2 and she doesn't care.  The only part she cares about is singing Happy Birthday and blowing out the candles.  And she gets to do that 3 times for her birthday. Because we spent last weekend with Grams and Peep and they got cupcakes and we sang Happy Birthday.  This Wednesday we'll celebrate with Gommy, Poppa, and Laura.  So it's all good.

At 2, Brynn is not such an easy child.  She still gets pissed if I try to leave her sight.  Put her in her high chair with some food while I try to run into the office to check email?  Nope.  Pisses her off.  I'm hoping this subsides in the near future.  Maybe now that I'm home with her all day, she'll get sick of seeing me all the time.  Although, I'd say she's quite the fan of the new arrangement.  And she's been pretty good too.  Most things I say (like "Want to take a nap?") get answered with "Tay" (her version of "K").  She's talking up a storm these days and even has several sentences that she says.  Of course, sometimes I'm the only one who can understand her.  Like when she says "Deedan es fi-in".  Translation - Ethan is crying.  She's got the whole punch buggy routine down.  "Mommy!  Pu Muggy!  Gimme ya hand"  Then she hits me on the hand.

At the doctor, she was 26 pounds and 36 inches tall.  Pretty sure that 36 inches is off though by at least an inch.  They weren't exactly scientific about it.  She wears size 6 shoe and 2T clothes.  So far this season she loves the baby pool, but not a fan of the big pool.  I'm sure she'll get over that quickly.

We also started potty training today as soon as we got back from our trip.  She went probably 2-3 hours without peeing at all then went through 2 pairs of underwear.  She did pee in the potty though right before bedtime, so that was a success!   Should be a fun week around here.

So, happy birthday to Brynn!

Week in pictures

Trying this out.  It's from last week's pictures (which I didn't resolve to taking more photos until mid-week).

1. Pedicure on my day off before my adventures with the kiddos began
2. Ethan scored 5 goals at his last soccer games!
3. Fun on the tire swing at Laurel Hills park
4. These boots were made for walkin
5. Brynn on the swing at the park (and kind of sucking her thumb, which she's started lately).
6. The note the tooth fairy left
7. Ethan's soccer team.  Braden was the coach, but he was out of town for the last game.
8. Fun at the Durham Bulls game!
9. Brynn likes jelly beans more than baseball

A farming we will go

I've come up with a different theme for each week basically to make it easier for me to come up with art projects, stories to read, activities, etc.  So this first week the theme is "Farms".  So the best way to kick off the week?  Head to a farm!  We headed out to a farm in north Durham on Saturday for a one hour tour.  Probably wasn't worth the 45 minute trip to get there, but hopefully the kids learned something about life on a farm.  When we first arrived (we were early), they were in process of artificially inseminating 3 cows.  Not exactly what I wanted to get out of the farm experience, but I guess even Braden and I saw something we'd never seen.

During the tour, the kids got to run around with goats and sheep, chickens, puppies, and kittens.  We also saw a mommy emu, a daddy, and 3 baby emus.  The emus didn't want to be touched though.  We pet some sweet horses and found the herd of cows.  Had to do a special call to get them to come into the field with us.  Goes a little something like this...."Here cows! (clap, clap, clap)".  Seriously.  And actually it works.  Who'd a thought.

Ethan got to hold a chicken, so that was cool.

Brynn likes petting the sheep.  This particular guy loved being pet and will actually knock you down if you don't pet him when he wants to be pet.

They also got to hold some eggs that had just been laid.

We continued the farm theme all the way through the weekend with a trip to the "Got to be NC" festival at the fairgrounds.  Okay, so maybe we spent most of the time riding rides and eating snowcones, but there were lots of tractors there, a really loud tractor pull contest going on, and we did go through the petting zoo area, so it counts, right?  Here's Blythe and Doug about to tackle the free-fall ride.  

Good weekend prep for (hopefully) a good farm-themed week.

Off to greener pastures

Well, this is it.  My last day working full-time.  I've been working full-time for the same company for 10 years (my 10 year anniversary was May 6th).  It hasn't been all that rewarding, especially in recent years.  They blamed the economy for freezes in merit increases.  Laid off people that were good workers.  Claimed they cared so much about their employees.  But there are more than 30,000 people who work for this company, so really everyone is just an employee number and an email address.  People at the top have gotten quite greedy as our company is doing well and yet still there are meager (if any) merit increases.  The work has been challenging though and keeps my brain in tip-top shape.  And I work with some really great people (even if I have had 4 different bosses in the last 2 years).  Plus I work from home, so that's always been the draw that keeps me here.

So I'm hoping my next full-time job (stay-at-home-mom) is more rewarding than this last one.  Brynn and Ethan  have their last day at school tomorrow and then they'll be home with me next week.  Blythe has school until June 7 and then the real challenge begins...me and ALL 3 kids.  Ethan says he's happy that he won't have to go to school anymore, but I don't think he gets that he won't see his friends anymore.  Wonder how long it will take before he's asking to go back.

I'm excited about this very big change in my life, but also very nervous about it.  Will I have the patience to deal with them all day every day?  Will they listen to ANYTHING I say?  Of course all the images in my mind are of us having fabulous days with lots of learning opportunities, but I know they won't be like that.  I've spent many hours working on themes for each week and coming up with learning opportunities, field trips, projects, etc.  But will Ethan be begging to watch TV all day and Brynn asking for snacks all day?  Probably at the start since that's how our weekends go.  Hopefully I can change that.  It hasn't really sunk in though that I will have almost NO time to myself.  I want to be able to spend a lot of quality time with the kids without having to worry about other things, but there is grocery shopping to do, house cleaning to be done, errands, exercising, and holding down 2 part-time jobs (swim camp administrator...which takes up more time than you'd think, and working for my current company which I've committed 10 hours a week to work).   Guess we'll figure it all out as we go along.

Somehow I'm hoping to blog more.  Or at least take more pictures.  Lynette - I'm planning to copy your "My week in pictures" so my goal is to take at least 9 pictures a week :)

So anyway, stay tuned for changes ahead and wish me luck!

Blythe lost her first tooth

On Thursday last week, Blythe's teacher sent me an email in the morning telling me Blythe had lost her first tooth!  I was pretty shocked considering I wasn't even aware she had a loose tooth.  Appears it probably wasn't all that loose, but during snack she couldn't get her tupperware container open, so she used her teeth and out came a tooth.  By the time she got around to telling her teacher, it was nowhere to be found.  She said she had it in her hand, but it must have fallen out.  They looked and looked, but couldn't find it.  Blythe wanted her teacher to email me right away so that I could tell the toothfairy to come even though she lost her tooth.

Later she asked me if I told the tooth fairy and I said "yes".  Still later she asked HOW I told the tooth fairy.  Wasn't quite prepared for that one, but I told her I sent the tooth fairy an email.

Anyway, Blythe was SO excited about losing a tooth.  Everyone in her class except Blythe and her friend Ariel had already lost a tooth, so now she joins the ranks of the other kindergartners.

She was also very excited to go to bed that night in anticipation of the tooth fairy coming.  Apparently one of the boys in her class said his tooth fairy brought him 4 dollars.  I made sure to tell Blythe there are LOTS of tooth fairies and each one does something different.  So, Blythe's tooth fairy isn't quite as wealthy as that boy's, but might make up for in style or friendliness (if we were ever to meet her).  This is what she left under Blythe's pillow along with 1 dollar.

Maybe our tooth fairy should have a name??

Loaded with sand

What?  Not everyone plays fat-kid-in-the-sandbox?

Le Artiste - Age 6 edition

Blythe LOVES art and loves to draw or paint or color or glue things.  Her talents cover a wide range as illustrated below:

1. Our very first "No Boys Allowed" sign in our house.  In case you couldn't get it from 'No BOY', she drew it out (only couldn't remember how to spell 'yes' and I believe those are intended to be shorts on the boy).

So that one is pretty rudimentary compared to the next.  Blythe's frog and lily pad picture she made at school was on display at the mall for 2 weeks.  Go Blythe!  

We had just left a clinic at her ballet studio about how-to hair and makeup for recitals, thus the dolled up face.  

Brynn's newly decorated room

Ok, so I'm pretty terrible at remembering to take "before" pictures.  The only one I have of Brynn's room is from before we bought the house.  But basically, we only had added furniture: her crib-turned-toddler bed, red toy box, dresser with pig knobs (left over from farm-themed nursery in last house) and a glider chair and ottoman.

I didn't really have plans to decorate it yet, but when Braden went on a trip to Louisiana with just he and Brynn around Easter, I figured it was an ideal time to paint it.  So I got to work.  Her room took quite a bit of effort and materials:
1. Paint whole room
2. Make stencils for butterflies, emblem over bed, and growth chart
3. Paint butterflies, emblem, and growth chart
4. Get new knobs for dresser and night stand (night stand was in closet, so we switched it with red toy box).
5. Pick out new bedding
6. Get new mattress and boxspring
7. Take apart crib/toddler bed to use just the back as the headboard
8. Order new curtains and and curtain rod and install (note: panels were on clearance at Bed Bath and Beyond for $5.00!  Nice!)
9. Buy white lamp, lamp shade, and ribbon.  Hot glue ribbon onto lamp shade.

And here we have Brynn's newly decorated room:

Last photo taken by Blythe Holloway Photography.

Brynn loves her new room!  She slept great last night and when I got up this morning, Ethan and Brynn were in her bed looking at books.  It's a popular spot since it's the biggest bed of the kids' beds.

Needless to say, now that Ethan and Brynn's rooms are painted, Blythe is very anxious for us to paint her room!  I think I should be able to do it in the next couple of weeks.  Stay tuned.

Anyone for a game of golf?

We had only semi-decorated Ethan's room after moving in.  The pennants were put up and that was it.  Combined with his comforter and pillows, it was a sports themed room, but there was room for improvement.  Braden had been bouncing around a lot of ideas...Wolfpack room, baseball room, a wall of all pennants, but finally decided upon a golf course.  He wanted to paint a golf course on Ethan's walls.  I have to admit I was skeptical.  That seems a little over ambitious for a non-artist.  But he formed an image in his mind, bought all the paint colors, drew out the golf scene, and then painted it.  And I have to admit I think it looks pretty darn good!  And Ethan is digging his golf room too!

Chart Toppers

Brynn's been singing quite a few songs for us recently.   ABC's has been a hit for a while now.  As has "If You're Happy and You Know It" and "Wheels on the Bus".  Other songs in her repertoire include: "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and "Set Fire to the Rain".  Okay, that last one isn't true (it's a hit song by Adele...I have to clarify that for my dad because I don't think he probably knows that one).

Anyway, she also loves Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee.  The first verse goes:
I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
Won't my mommy be so proud of me
I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee
Ouch!  It stung me!

Here it is Brynnified:

These days with Blythe

Haven't posted much about Blythe recently.  She's still doing ballet once a week, but has told me she doesn't like ballet.  That might change a little today when she gets her costume for her recital in June.  After she puts that on and some makeup for the recital, she might like ballet a little more, but I'm thinking she won't do it again next year.

She did start swimming yesterday though and she couldn't have been more excited.  She's swimming 55 minutes 2 times a week for the next 5 or 6 weeks until summer league starts.  She hadn't swam AT ALL since Labor Day, so I was a little concerned about how she would do.  It was pretty clear it had been a while as she attempted freestyle and had to stop on the wall several times on the first lap.  But after a little while she improved and was so happy the whole time.  She'd smile and wave to me at the end of every lap.  She even seemed excited that her teeth were chattering, so she pointed that out to me.  When they were done after 55 minutes, she was disappointed that it was time to get out.  So, very cool that she's so excited.  I know it has a lot to do with the fact she hasn't swam in 7 months, so we'll see how she likes swimming after this session, then summer league start, then swim camp, then a full summer of swimming.

As she was getting ready for swim practice, she asked me if the clothes she was wearing were from Justice.  For those not in the know, Justice used to be Limited Too and it is very bright and sparkly in that store.  She has one thing from Justice, a long dress we just bought not too long ago.  So anyway, I said no, only the dress was from Justice.  So she said she wanted to wear the dress the next day to school.  I'm a little unprepared for this.  We are only in kindergarten and we are concerned about brand names?  Good grief!  She's also been telling me recently that she's embarrassed by things.  The water bottle I packed in her lunch, or the jacket I made her wear.

So, she's like 6 going on 14.

She also loves art and has had a few new pieces put on her Art link on the right side of the blog.  Check them out!

One of these days maybe she'll learn to ride her bike.  She finally started trying again and blew a tire.  I took it in and they were going to fix that and a few other things and get it back to me in a few days.  That was 8 days ago, so I guess I should call and check.

Lastly, she appears to judge how much fun something is by the number of friends she makes while doing it.  I've sent her to a few camps during school breaks.  The first one she went to was at Marbles.  She said it was "ok" because she only made 1 friend.  On the first day of Spring Break, she went to another camp at Marbles.  She appeared to like that one better because she made 2 friends.  Last week she went to a Cheerleading camp (because my friend won a free week of camp, but her kids are too young to use it).  She liked that one quite a bit, not really because of the cheerleading or the gymnastics, but because she made 3 friends.

Overall, she is a very vivacious, beautiful, smart, loving young girl and I'm so lucky to have her!

Cheetos!

Brynn.  That girl loves her some Cheetos!  I mean LOVES Cheetos.  She would eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I would let her.  I probably should not ever buy them.  Though in my defense these Cheetos were from a bag my mom brought, so I'm not the guilty party.  This time.

OUTDOOR soccer

Ethan started up outdoor soccer a few weeks ago.  Have to be specific about that...OUTDOOR soccer.  He did indoor soccer a little over the winter, but always wanted to know when he'd be able to do OUTDOOR soccer.  The question stemmed from this day care activity where someone comes once a week to work with the kids on sports skills.  It, of course, costs more money and since we already spend an arm and a leg on day care, we weren't doing that.  But his best bud at school does.

So anyway, he plays soccer on Sundays.  A 1 hour practice (yes, that's too long) followed by a 40 minute game.  So it's a stretch getting him to focus for that long.  But he's been doing great!  I haven't been at practice the last couple of times (I've been home with a napping Brynn), but Braden is coaching Ethan's team and he says Ethan has been trying really hard in practice, listening, and really getting better each week.  Yesterday he even scored 2 goals!  He couldn't have been any more excited.  It's so great to see him work on something really hard and then get the results he wants.

One day I would love to get up at the game with my camera and get some good action shots.  For now though, I have to deal with Brynn on my lap wanting snacks every 13 seconds and Blythe who wants to be the photographer.  So, here's a video clip.  Tried to get him scoring a goal, but never worked out getting that shot.

And here's a couple of photos (these may even have been taken by Blythe).