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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

To You They May Be Hills... To Us They're MOUNTAINS!


Woo Hoo for Jack Henry! He's got this potty training thing down....well....almost! If it wasn't for the suggestion of his teacher, Ms. Meredith, we'd still be battling it at home but once those undies went on it only took about 2 weeks to go without a tinkle accident at all! He even can go through the night without wetting his pull up!

It was the pooping that took awhile to conquer. Once we got him, shall I say....REGULAR with the help of Miralax things started to change. "MMMMMM.....I LOVE Miralax, Mom!" was the comment that Jack made! (I wanted to record him and send it to the Miralax people as a suggestion for advertising because I would gather that people who are familiar with the stuff wouldn't say they love it but not my Jack!) Then we had to deal with the poop accidents because he was "afraid" to sit on the potty to poop. I don't know why, he just seemed to be. Call it a control thing or whatever but he just didn't want to do it! Finally it came to a bribe thing. "You poop on the potty like a big boy and Mommy and Daddy will buy you a present!" Even his Moots (my Mom) added to the incentive.

Every morning and every night, we ask repeatedly "Do you have to Poop?" only to get the "No!" and then 15 minutes later he'd come to us telling us that he was poopy! So I resorted then to the books as well. "Where's The Poop?" and that seemed to be the nudge that he needed. About a week ago, it was a Friday night, Tim and I both knew that Jack had not pooped at all and that we were bound for a poop that night. I watched him and waited until I saw that stance or cue from him that was the indication that he had to go. As soon as I saw it I said "Jack do you need to poop?" and when he said "No" I said , let's go sit on the potty and scooped him up and headed for the bathroom ASAP.

He sat down and after a few strained faces, HE WENT! Hip Hip Hooray! You would have thought that he had conquered Mt. Everest with the cheering that we did! We were so proud of him and wanted him to feel the same way! We even called Moots to let her know and put in the request for the special "poop present" that Jack had been promised (The Dinoco King Helicopter from the movie CARS)

Now, I'm not saying that from there on out it's been smooth sailing - we've had our bumps and setbacks but I think he gets it now. Last night, we were due for another poop session and it was not to be had. Bedtime rolled around and Jack was in bed and lights were about to be turned out when he said "Daddy, I need to go potty" in his cute shy voice. Thinking that it was a ploy to delay bedtime, Tim at first hesitated, but then thought differently hoping to head off any further delays. So they walked down the hallway to the bathroom. As I sat in the darkness of the bedroom with Mason, sending him off to a hopefully peaceful nights sleep, I could hear talking and then a loud cheer come from the boys' bathroom. I KNEW what had happened! He had gone poop - again!

About 5 minutes later, I look down the hallway to see the image of my pajama clad son, marching down the hallway, head held high, shoulders back and VERY proudly he whispers to me "Mom, I went poop in the potty!". Daddy hoisted him into bed, he curled up into his sleep position and that was it - it was time to turn in for the night. Mission accomplished on all fronts! He had conquered the mountain!

Potty training has been such an adventure for us! I never in a million years thought that it would be THIS difficult and I only can THINK about what it's going to be like to train the beast (or should I say VERY STUBBORN HEADED) that is our son Mason - he will be his own force to be reconed with.

So, to some, our successes may be small hils that we have climbed but to Tim and I, and especially Jack - they are mountains!

Thursday, February 21, 2008

A Whole Lot Of Magic At......


Sunday, in an effort to get the boys out of the house and cure a case of boredom for Caroline, my 14 year old niece, who is in town visiting, Tim and I decided that it was time for a trip to The Magic House, one of St. Louis awesome Children's Museums. We had never taken the boys and it had been YEARS since we had been ourselves so we were all excited about what we were going to do and see there. We had a BLAST!









Thursday, February 14, 2008

Will You Be Our Valentine?

Happy Valentine's Day!

~ Love Jack & Mason

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Motor Mania











Saturday we took a trip up to the Parkway Early Childhood Service Center for a Parents As Teachers activity called MOTOR MANIA! It basically was a 3 hour event to allow your children to romp, play and explore in the comfort of a LARGE and open space. The boys had a blast!

They had a room with all sorts of "Winter" activites: Shoveling snow, throwing snowballs, ice skating and washing mittens.













Another room had "Animal" activities: a pig collage, playdough, feeding the elephants pasta and bean bag tosses.

We spent 2 full hours there and when we came home we all were tired and worn out but had TONS of fun!

Thursday, February 7, 2008

What Kind Of World Do You Want?


WhatkindofWORLDdoyouwant.com is the first video community that gives back!

We are all connected to one another through our actions. Each person has the ability to make a difference. This is one of the messages of the Five For Fighting video "World."

Tell the world what kind of world you want and raise money for charity by making and uploading a video of yourself, your friends or your family--whomever and whatever--answering the question, "What Kind Of World Do You Want?"

Or, you can raise money for charities that John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting has personally selected. Watch any clip on this site and money will go to the charity listed with that video. Please see below for the updated list of charities and contributions per views.

Monday, February 4, 2008

The Silence Was.....Deafening!

Sunday was an odd day. Because of the 8” of snow that we had gotten 3 days before, as the temperatures rose and it became warmer and warmer, it became foggier and foggier. Looking outside it was almost eerie with fog so thick you could cut it with a knife.

12:15am, I’m sound asleep in bed when all of a sudden……………BRRRRRUMP…..and the house became completely silent……AND VERY VERY DARK! We had lost our power. It wasn’t storming out or anything so the reason behind it was a complete mystery. I reached over to tap Tim on the shoulder, or to at least find out if he was next to me only to find cold, unused sheets. I sat up in bed, threw the covers off of me and started heading towards the hallway whispering “Tim!”. To hear him respond “I’m getting a flashlight!” I asked if he knew what had caused the power to go out and he didn’t know.

We called in to AmerenUE, our local Power Company, to report the outage. I was not optimistic of a quick restore as for some strange reason, they listed off about 13 zip codes in our area that were experiencing outages as well and ours wasn’t listed at all – we were the first reporting outage. Tim and I grabbed flashlights, cell phones (for alarms) and climbed back into bed to settle in until one of the boys woke up. As I lay in bed, I could hear Tim’s rhythmic breathing lulling himself off to sleep and then it hit me…..the silence of our house without power was, well - deafening!

We normally have hepafilters and the drone of the intercom in the air in our room at night and the boys have a hepafilter and their CD player going all night long as well. Instead….the drone was gone, the hum was not there, nor were the beautiful lullabies that play my children to sleep, there was only silence – silence of a sleeping household. The silence of two busy boys resting and regaining their energy for another day. The silence of a tired father who works too much trying to get some much needed rest. The silence of life stopping on a dime until it was time to start again.

AND I COULDN'T SLEEP!!!!!

Instead, I lay in bed listening to Tim’s snoring until I heard the whimper, and then a scream from Mason as he woke up and was sitting in his crib, in the dark, wondering himself what was wrong and why were things so quiet? I quickly went into the boys room hoping to avoid Jack waking up too, grabbed Mason, and headed back to our room to lie down in our bed with him to go back to sleep.

As I lay there again, this time with Mason in the crook of my right arm, and then Tim next to him, I was slowly sent off to sleep by the sound of my husband AND my son’s snoring. Ahhhh……what a wonderful sound. Much better than the deafening dead silence of the darkness.

Only to be woken up again by the BRRRRUMMMMMPPPP.......beep.....as the power kicked back on 2 hours later as mysteriously as it had gone off.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Early Dismissal













An early day home from work & school yesterday due to our second snow storm of the season (we got a total of 8"). We arrived home and the boys wanted to play out in the snow. I was reluctant to do it because I would much rather stay in the warm comfort of the house but then I came to the realization that I've played in the snow before and know how much fun it is but the boys really haven't. They've only really played in it one other time.

So I sucked it up, changed into my jeans, boots, warm coat, baseball cap and gloves and suited the boys up. I swear it took me longer to get them both dressed than we were outside and asked Jack twice before we went out if he had to go potty.We headed out in the snow and had so much fun! I pulled the boys around the house in the sled that Tim had bought when we had our last snow and then we just hung out in the back going down our little hill and having a good time. Eventually the mittens came off and hands started to get cold so we headed in to warm up and have dinner.

It was fun. Just me and my boys doing what kids do best - enjoying life to the fullest!