Family Home Evening With a Toddler – Obedience

I mentioned in a previous post that I bought a laminator and have been making family home evening packets.  A lot of mine come from Pinterest, but this week I decided that we needed to learn about obedience (after Stormy ran into a parking lot and continued running even after I told him to stop) and what I found on the interwebs just weren’t cutting it for my two year old.  So I decided to gather things from different sources and compile my very own.

Now, we have a board we’ll use later when the kids are older to make assignments for family home evening (Christmas gift from my SIL – I’ll post a picture at some point), but for now, it’s all on mom and dad, so at least for now things should go together nicely.

We started with a prayer.

Then we sang the first verse of “Nephi’s Courage” from the Children’s Songbook.  Fun fact – I didn’t know that was the title until I had to Google it. I’ve always just called it “I will go, I will do.”

Then we had a story/lesson David’s Lesson, which I pulled off the LDS.org website from the Friend.  (I printed and laminated this for my folder)

For our activity we played Obedience Games that I found on a homeschooling website.  We did “Mother says” first but I think we’ll play one of these games once a day until my child stops doing suicide missions into the library parking lot.

We closed with a prayer and then it was time for treats.  Stormy and I made Rice Krispies Treats (there’s a video in that link too in case you’ve never made these before…not that I’m judging)

That’s all.

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General Update

Have I mentioned that we want to move? I’ve been wanting to move since Stormy was born but now Chewy is on board too. The house is just getting too small.

So we’ve been saving for a down payment and working on fixing this house up and we are hoping to move sometime between spring and fall 2018. In the meantime our house continues to wage war against our savings account. I’m not sure who is winning to be honest.

We have a huge list of projects and as time goes by we start wondering what we can just leave, if you’ve seen my neighborhood you know we aren’t going to get back much money on unnecessary upgrades.

A few weeks ago, when I was potty training Stormy actually, we had a lot of rain. At one point I thought I stepped in pee by the fireplace, then later i realized it wasn’t pee but that our fireplace was leaking. It was a bad week for me and I just sat down on the couch and cried because I wanted my toddler to stop peeing on the floor and I wanted to be done with this money pit. Then I bucked up and got to work. I found a company on Google that had great reviews and called them for an estimate. They said they’d have to inspect it first and that would be $199. Seemed steep but when rain water is coming into your house, threatening to mess up your floor, you do it. So they came out, took a picture of the top of my chimney (I guess that was the inspection) and said the repairs would cost $1350….so of course we got another estimate. The next company came to do the estimate (for free but even if they did an inspection it would have only cost $50). The guy sealed the hole for now (for free – thoughtful), and he was knowledgeable and honest with me, he didn’t think as much work as the first company said needed to be done actually needed to be done and he explained to me why. Then – their estimate came in at $600…I’ll let you guess which company we went with. He even explained to me why they came in cheaper. Most chimney companies work on commission, they do not.

Anyway, now that I’ve written my review. So there’s that.

Stormy starts “preschool” on the 15th. It’s a Mothers Morning Out program, it’s not full blown preschool. One day a week, no parties, pageants or field trips. I’m hoping it will be good for him to interact with other kids besides his cousins. Several times throughout the year I’ll be helping out in the classroom. Should be fun to see him in that setting.

We had a bunch of rain last week and Stormy discovered puddles. And I had fun taking slow-mo videos of it.

Gertie is now 3.5 months! Can you believe it? The craziest thing is, I wasn’t even dating anyone 5 years ago and now I’m approaching my fourth anniversary and have two crazy but adorable kids.

My church calling is going well. I’ve been serving in young women’s for about three and a half years. It’s coming to an end soon though and I find it all bittersweet. It will be nice to have my Thursday nights back but I find that going to youth night always makes me feel better and refreshed. It’s hard hanging out with two kids all day. I absolutely love the girls I work with and even though I’ll still see them at church, I know it will be different and I’ll miss them. I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever calling is coming next, but it’s hard to imagine any other calling being as fulfilling as this one has been.

I bought a laminator…that’s right, I felt that was update worthy. I’ve been making little family home evening pouches (I’ll do a post on those later) and laminating everything I can think of. I love it.

I think that’s it for the update – I’ll try to be better about blogging more often so that the posts aren’t so long.

Potty update

I realize that I went offline on the potty training bit. I stuck with potty training for five days. They were the worst five days of my life. I got so sick and tired of stepping in pee, cleaning it up and turning around only to step in pee a few feet away. I don’t know how a bladder so small can hold so much urine.

I decided to stop potty training because of a blog post I read (and I’m sorry I don’t have the link right now). The author said that one mistake made about potty training is starting too soon. She compared potty training to walking and talking. You don’t force your kids to do those just as you shouldn’t think you can force them to use the potty in a week. I realized that Stormy isn’t ready. He has shown almost every sign, but I misread his interest in what the potty was with an interest in actually using it.

So I’ve decided to wait until he’s 16 and desperate to get out of diapers because he can’t seem to get a date….just kidding. But I am going to give it some more time. In the meantime we will continue to talk about the potty, we’ll show him how to use it and we’ll encourage his interest in using it himself. It’s just a battle I wasn’t ready to fight and honestly, we’re both a lot happier right now.

Potty Training: Day 1

Lildonbro here, reporting live from Potty Training Central. We're two hours into potty training and have gotten the little one to sit on the potty 3-4 times. He's currently walking around without any pants on and has peed on the floor once, which left him looking both surprised and pleased with himself. The offender has received one ball from the Potty Prizes box and has been informed several times that to get more prizes he'll have to use the potty and actually leave behind pee or poop. He is put on the potty every 15 minutes thanks to a timer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I almost gave up as soon as I started. I've read and my sisters reminded me that the first day is the hardest. Day one is meeting that expectation so far. He fought me on sitting on the potty, he kept asking for a diaper. If it weren't for motivating texts from my sister he would be in a diaper right now.
My advice from my two hours of experience – have someone who's experienced this so they can help keep you motivated when you want to quit; explain (again) with visuals of the treats (or chart) that to earn those treats, they have to use the potty; if you've got a fighter, give him his first treat for being willing to sit on the potty (and then be prepared to hold your ground that he has to leave some kind of bio material to receive anymore).

We are doing the diaperless, training pantless, big boy underwearless approach. i.e. Little Man is naked from the waist down.

Stayed tuned for more updates about the Boy being put on kitty Prozac…just kidding…

Potty Talk

Tomorrow I will start potty training Stormy.  Am I nervous? Heck yeah.  I’ve never potty trained a toddler before.  I let Stormy go without a diaper once for not more than five minutes and found some poop on his bedroom floor.  But we’ve been reading potty books and working on the lingo.  He’s excited about his own potty (and has been for a long time).  And he tries to take his pants off

all.

the.

time.

He doesn’t care where we are.  He tells me when he has pooped, so maybe soon he’ll tell me when he has to poop.

Given that I know plenty of kids older than him who are not potty trained, I’m worried I’m doing this too soon.  So this may be the worst idea I’ve ever had (which will top the other two worst ideas I ever had that I happen to have had this week).  But – it could also work and I won’t have to change as many diapers, or fight a thirty pound toddler while trying to change a diaper.  Worst case – I’ll get new carpets.

Got milk?

I’m tall.  It’s taken me many, many years to get comfortable with being tall.  Short women seem to have it easy; they can find pants that are long enough, they can find cute shoes in their size, most men seem tall to them, etc. etc.

But there are times when being tall has it’s advantages and I’m not going to lie, most of them happen in the grocery store.  From the time I was a teen, I’ve learned to recognize that relieved look a shorter person would have when I started down an aisle.  As soon as I was close enough they’d ask me to get an item from the top shelf for them.  Or one close to the top but near the back of the shelf.

It’s been a while though, since I’ve used my height and arms for the good of myself or another in the grocery store.  So it was nice today, when I went shopping and came upon the milk.  All the milks I could see had an expiration date that wouldn’t get them through to the next time I needed to go to the store.  I almost decided to go without milk but then I noticed a rack of milk further back in the refrigerator.  If I stepped in just slightly, I would be able to reach a milk on the top shelf of that second rack.  So I did it! I got a milk with an expiration date that will get me through almost two weeks! I put the milk in my cart, feeling pretty good about my amazonian arms when I noticed an older gentlemen looking at me, it was clear he had just witnessed what I had done.  He asked if the date was better on those and I confirmed they were.  Then he asked if I would get him one too.  No problem!  I got him one and then we talked briefly about why this matters (neither of us use a lot of milk so it’s nice to have it last as long as possible).  I could tell he was awed by my ability and maybe by my refusal to accept the expiration date offered me.

This is my life now – changing diapers, medicating a cat, chasing a toddler, and fighting against the grocery man and his expiration dates…it’s a pretty good life.

 

The Kitty Life

Since Gertie was born, the cat's been peeing on the couch. As you can imagine, I'm not too happy. I cleaned the couch and have had to keep plastic covering on it, which is annoying. I tried several things, everything really, to keep him from peeing. Finally, a friend suggested taking him to the vet. Just to ensure it wasn't a bladder infection (of course I think he'd be peeing EVERYWHERE if that was the case) and to possibly put him on Prozac. I didn't want to do it for a few reasons – one was expense (because I'm a terrible person) and also I wasn't sure we couldn't stop the behavior with everything else. But one failure after the next and I was on the phone making an appointment. I took him at the end of last week. Grandma watched the kids while we were there. The car ride home was intense. A cat who hates traveling in the cat carrier, a tired baby, and a toddler who hates when his sister cries. I took a video to prove it. I was losing my mind but it was also funny. Diagnosis: kitty to be put on Prozac for 1.5 months to try to correct the problem. Will update soon.

(Sorry it's sideways) By the end of the trip I needed Prozac…