fever fever, go away, come again another day!

mosey is down, yet again, with a fever. he's got spurts of feeling great, mixed with stretches of lazy lounging on the couch, mixed with miserable coughing fits. so. it's been four days now, which to some, means a serious illness... but i guess it really hasn't been super bad yet.

i sure am tired, though, folks. waking up during the night to coughing/crying toddler, and then changing my schedule around so that i can manage to start my day super early and work full time but still only pay a sitter half days... it's been tough. but i suppose the extra toddler cuddles makes up for it. he's such a sweet kid. 

i ask him, "are you coughing?" and he says in his pathetic, sad voice, "yeah." 

lovelove,

me

cute spoonerisms and a classic

i've been meaning to write a few cute things down from the last month, for the memories. :)

• Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?
• mosey calls the purple cat "kurckle pat"
• mosey calls the black sheep "sha beep"
• he called mickey mouse, "mick-a-mau" or sometimes "donna." he's already corrected it slightly over time, but it was super cute for a little while there.

lovelove,

h

singing

mosey has sung his first two recognizable songs this past month. ABCs and the itsy bitsy spider. it's pretty amazing, guys. and, have you ever thought about how hard it must be to learn the alphabet? so many sounds to remember. kids are amazing.

that's all. :)

sentences

so, i don't think i mentioned this, but around mo's 2nd birthday, he suddenly began to say short two-word sentences. i know this probably doesn't seem like much, but remember, this kid didn't really start saying much of anything until just a few months ago. to me, it feels like a christmas miracle.

the other day, he used this sentence-power to tell me, "i get it!" when i was trying to take his bib off after dinner. and indeed, he got it. similarly, he's been telling me, "i find it!" and "i did it!" when he is successful in his searching or achieving or whatnot. i am so proud that my heart might really just burst out of my chest.

tonight, during our bedtime story, he was holding the book Hello Animals (a fond throwback from his infant days), and he said, "where'd you go, panda?" and after flipping to the page with the panda, he smiled a satisfied smile and whispered, "panda." i can see why people say this stage is their favorite.

also, the pizza. this kid says the word "zebra" as "pizza." he gets a lot of practice saying "pizza" because, you'd be surprised, there are a lot of zebras in our world. oh, and we love to eat that (pizza, not zebra) too. so... that's confusing.

also, i guess i haven't written in a little while, mosey loves to put together this random monkey matryoshka doll that we have. he put it together with virtually zero assistance yesterday. which basically proves that we have a genius on our hands, no?

lovelove,

sock momma

child proof

the only things that we've child proofed in our house are... some of our outlets. i have figured that i've wanted to teach Mo not to play around with cabinets and drawers. in other words, my parenting philosophy (instead of relying on child proofing items) is that i have wanted to actively teach our child how to behave in the bathroom, kitchen... the real world. it has definitely kept me on my toes, and slightly more anxious than i would have been if there had been safety clips in place, but i believe it's paid off.

also, a kitchen with childproofing clips on everything is such a hassle.

anyway, now, when i leave the cabinet door under the kitchen sink open, he closes it. well, first he takes the all purpose cleaner bottle off the kitchen table and puts it back under the cabinet, and then he closes it. i didn't even teach him that part.

also, new favorite phrase these days: "oh der dare" for "over there." LOVE it.

lovelove,

me

the end of day 3, aka, the end of potty training

folks, as of this afternoon, we are no officially longer "officially" potty training.

yesterday and today were somewhat better in terms of pairs of underwear--only three pairs yesterday and three today. he also didn't drink as many fluids, which i'm certain had a role to play. but after three full days of persistent potty training, practice running to the bathroom, praises for dry underwear, disapproval for wet underwear (even emphatically claiming that his pal elmo doesn't like wet underwear), cleaning up puddles together (following that book's instructions)...

i watched as my son squatted in the middle of the hallway and peed a medium-sized puddle.

that was the moment when i suddenly lost my will to potty train. it just drained right out of me, especially as i began the protocol, and he dropped his truck into the puddle of urine. i tried to do the drill, but i just didn't have it in me. i couldn't do it. i realized i had failed. we sopped up the mess. i sat him on the potty and then gave him a quick bath. i left him naked, disinfected the floor, washed the truck, and snapped at him when he tried to flush the toilet when nothing was in there. i hate when i snap at that sweet boy.

i thought to myself, "self, you should have bought that bottle of wine."

he's going back to daycare tomorrow, and i can't in good conscience send him there with underwear on. so. diapers it is. hello-four-year-old-moses-with-diapers-on.

i do feel like i wasted a perfectly good labor day weekend with astoundingly hard labor. but i gave it the best try i could, and after a short cry about it this afternoon, i'm okay with how it's turned out. i am confident that though mosey has nearly all of the readiness signs, he is just not ready. i think he'll have the desire to wear big boy pants and go on the potty as he wants more independence, but for now, when i ask him if he's a baby, he says simply, "yeah." and that's okay with me.

lovelove,
momma mia

day 1 of official potty training

i didn't meant to officially start potty training. but here we are. officially potty training. i bought these two books for reference: toilet training in less than a day and that's how i roll. the first book was very specific and regimented, and seemed like it would produce the results that it advertised (complete potty training in less than a day--this means walking to the potty, pulling down pants, sitting, peeing, pulling up pants, dumping pee from potty into the toilet, returning potty container to the potty, and flushing the toilet). after about an hour and 45 minutes of absolutely some of the hardest work i've done so far in motherhood, i realized, this isn't going to work for me. i mean, it started off very promising, but... cut to 4 completely soaked pairs of underwear later, we were both sweaty, semi-covered in urine, out-of-breath, and miserable. my back is still yelling at me.

so i put diapers on him.

then i started reading the second book. and i realized, i can't turn back now. we've already moved to underwear. putting diapers on him now is basically saying, oh, potty training is hard? that's okay, we've got diapers. you can wear those until you're 4, and that's okay with me. it's mixed signals, and i hate that kind of parenting. besides, i've done nearly all the big-ticket changes in mosey's life cold turkey. why start doing something different now? oh, and by the way, that second book is poorly written, but very funny. unfortunately, it was about 200 pages too short for my taste. it should be called a booklet, or a glorified pamphlet, to be honest with you. but, well, different strokes for different folks, right?

okay. so now on to share what i've learned in the past 24 hours. first. my shopping list:

• toddler underwear, preferably with his current favorite characters. initially, i bought 8. when i went through 4 in 1 hour and 45 minutes, i realized i probably needed more. i went back to the store during naptime today and bought 16 more pairs. i think that will be enough not to have to do laundry any more frequently than we already do it. 
• treats for mosey. i bought gummy fruit snacks, which he loves, and i like to think they're not as bad for you as straight up candy. when i saw how the morning went, i upped the anty a bit. i got some peanut butter m&ms. it was a good move. the desire for these special treats is very high.
• a jelly jar type of thing that shows off those treats for mosey but keeps them sealed (tightly, if possible, toddlers are very persistent). this will stay in the bathroom. 
• treats for mom. i read to do this in the second book up there. she mentioned two bottles of wine. after the morning i had, i decided what i needed were those strawberry shortcake ice cream bars. i had one this afternoon. it was amazing.
• we had a cushy toilet seat for mosey already, so we used that today.
• i couldn't find a step stool in all of god-forsaken walmart, so i got a plastic milk crate. the height is nice, but the corners have hurt mosey on several occasions already. oh well. it works for stepping up to the toilet and the sink.
• i didn't have a peeing dolly (as the first book suggested), so i used a stuffed bear as our teaching tool and a squirting bath toy to simulate the bear going pee pee in the toilet. it worked very well. i just had to watch out that mosey didn't drop mr. bear into the toilet on accident.
• bed liners. i don't know if we'll need these for his bed, but we already have used it on furniture to help catch any pee pee during meal times so far. 
• more paper towels. i wasn't using the cushy potty seat this morning (just because they don't use it at daycare, and i thought, it'd be great if mosey could learn to hold himself up and pee in regular toilets). well, the problem is that the regular toilet doesn't have a splash guard for boys. this means that if he's got two sippy cups of juice in his bladder and he's peeing full-speed ahead with his penis sticking up, everything between the toilet and about two to three feet in front of the toilet will get a generous splash of urine. whoops. paper towels became very handy. our bathroom currently smells like a public stairwell, even after careful cleaning. :O\
• juice. 
• stickers. i bought this roll of 600 Cars stickers for $3. what a find! i used them today each time mosey felt his underwear and they were dry. it was kind of an adapted reward system from the first book's recommendation. basically, i wanted for mosey to learn that dry underwear is good underwear. wet underwear is underwear we can't wear anymore, and there is no prize for wet underwear. he seemed quite proud of all the stickers he'd gotten through the day (we taped a piece of paper on the bathroom door and then checked the underwear every few minutes; with each dry check, he got to put a sticker on the paper). 
• pull-ups. i'm thinking that we'll have to use diapers or pull-ups during naptime and nighttime for a while. he's always got a full diaper after sleeping. i haven't used the pull-ups yet.
• "friends-who-care" list. this wasn't purchased, but it was prepared. a list of all the people in the world that would be happy/proud that mosey was doing all the things he was doing. lots of praise and encouragement. 

the wet underwear count was up to 9 by the end of the day, i think. he full-on cried a few of those times, because i think he really knew that he shouldn't have wet his underwear. i will admit to you, i am having my doubts now that maybe i started too early.... but it's too late now. *shrug* hopefully, he'll be farther along before we have to go back to daycare on tuesday. 

lovelove,

drained momma