Potty Training

I am finally going to do it. After the agony of potty training my 4 year old boy (with only weeks until the beginning of pre-school), I am ready to work on Livy, my 3 year old. She was ready when Liam was but I couldn't bear to go through one more day of a toddler peeing in my trash can. So she waited.

Now she's 3 and most of her 2 year old friends are successfully trained. I feel lazy and almost like I've missed a sure fire chance to get it done fast - when she was interested because Liam was doing it. Oh well, what's in the past ...

Liam was very stubborn and in the end the only thing that worked to completely potty train him was the star chart.

For every pee in the potty - 1 star

For every poo in the potty - 2 stars

Every blatant accident removed a star

10 stars = a Transformer

We bought 4 Transformers and we were done by the 3rd. I couldn't believe it was that easy.

With Livy, I'm heading straight for the chart. This time I got a little creative with it - oddly creative in fact. She doesn't care what it looks like - nobody does in fact - except me because I wanted a fast project while the kids colored. If I had thought about it, I would have laminated it and used it for other things, like encouraging Liam to sleep in his bed all night instead of the couch. That has been an epic battle.

I whipped this up using bits of old maps for the days, thick white paper for the white banding, 2 thick craft colored papers taped together for the base sheet, a sharpie, and several stamps I carved but never used for anything. Everything was purposely done by hand, eyeballed, and without a straight edge - I just didn't feel like making this a masterpiece. After all, its to record pee and poo, but hopefully exciting enough to get her running to the pot.

Clean Plate Club

My kids asked if they could have Chinese noodles for breakfast this morning. I told them the Chinese diner is closed until this afternoon.

Luckily the only wanted to use "Chinese sticks" aka chopsticks to eat whatever they happened to have for breakfast. Waffles.

With large pieces they almost have a good pinch. The have to use a second hand to load the sticks, but then hold the waffles in between sticks to their mouths.

Not one complaint, request for a fork, or waffle stab was recorded during the 5 minutes it took to clean their plates of 2 waffles each (plus seconds).

Small Magazine

The excitement of seeing something on which you labored for hours in an actual magazine,  photographed professionally, cannot be described. 

As some of you may already know, one of my Big Girl Bags made it into Small Magazine!  I'm very proud (its the one on the left with the buildings).  Thanks to Small for making my day/month/year.  And such interesting and beautiful layouts.

The bag is still on sale at Etsy

Dinosaur Eggs

On Thanksgiving, my in-laws brought a gift for my kids.  They opened the bags feverishly, flipping the tissue paper behind them.  Dinosaur eggs.

These mammoths could have passed for those of an ostrich.  We put them in a mason jar and covered them with water.  And then my children watched and waited for a good half an hour until my son said "this is taking a long time mom".  I explained the dinosaurs "hatched" over a number of days.  Patience was the key here.

When the first crack appeared in my son's egg it was midnight.  Because he had checked a number of times before bed, my husband brought the mason jar into my son's room to show him the tiny baby head of a yellow-green dinosaur poking through the top of the egg.  He didn't open his eyes, move his head, or show any signs of waking from his deep turkey and pumpkin pie slumber.

The next morning they discovered on their own that their dinosaur babies had made their appearance.  And that they'd have to wait a few more days for their full maturation.  The above photo is less than a half an hour after they officially "hatched".