Give me a PEE!

What is this a picture of?

Ok it's not that obvious so I'll just tell you. This is a picture of my preschooler (squinting because "It's bright Mommy") holding a bag of diapers. Not just any diapers, no sir. They are his leftover ones. The ones that his school sent home today because he doesn't need them anymore because...you guessed it...at the tender age of forty three and a half, he's

potty trained!

Ahem. Sorry I got a little excited there. But Ashton is potty trained! I am going to call it official because he came home from school today with no accidents. While that doesn't mean there won't ever be any, I truly feel like he gets it. I have no hesitation about going out with him in underwear - he knows, there's just no other way to say it. He's still in pull-ups for naps and an overnight diaper, but that's allowed in my opinion.

So, this new "potty trained" status cost us a small fortune in Matchbox cars and several days spent mostly at home, but we were stuck there anyway due to school vacation week and we knew it was time. I mean, he is three and a freaking half. Like OLD. But given the chance, he would always choose to go in his diaper, so at the start of last week, we told him we were out of diapers and put him in underwear. It went better than we could have expected. He had two accidents right off the bat but then it clicked and honestly, I'm pinching myself, but we really haven't looked back! He turned into a potty machine.

[12/15/15: To you creeps looking at the picture of my kid in his underwear from wherever you are in the world, I'm taking it out of this post.]

Standing up and peeing on the potty has turned into a favorite pastime. He will run in, pull down his pants and then 100% of the time he will say, "Ok let's wait!", addressing the few seconds before he starts to go. Poop was a little harder to tackle but I'll spare you those details.

Overall, I was really dreading this process. Everyone loves to say that the hardest thing you do between giving birth and potty training is potty training. Also, after watching some of my friends drag portable potties with them everywhere they went, well it all just seemed so cumbersome. Then there are the endless posts about it on the online moms' forums, the problems people have, the sticker charts, what books are best, etc etc. I was exhausted thinking about it. I didn't have time to read any books and I wasn't sure what reward structure would work, so I put it off. In all honesty too I was waiting for Ashton to be emotionally ready. In my heart I knew that for a long time, he wasn't, and I didn't want to force him.

So here we are! After a week of lots of encouragement, some successful outings (peeing in public restrooms, holding it in the car until we got home, etc.) we then faced the biggest test with back to school. Yesterday, Monday, I dropped him off and we told his teacher about his new underwear, very exciting, blah blah. I picked him up at noon and was like, "Oh man, these are NOT the clothes I sent you in..." Turns out, in three hours, he had two pee accidents but also five successful trips to the bathroom. What is this kid drinking?? But today, no accidents, and I was told there weren't even any close calls. Like he was an old pro! Hence, they sent him home with his diapers. It was a big deal (for me). 

When we were in the car I told him over and over how proud I was of him and how happy it made me that he was telling his teachers he had to go. He said, "Sanks!" ("Thanks!") and then "I want ice cream for lunch. And fruit snacks and a new car and then I want a chocolate coin and some milk!" Basically every potty prize he has ever gotten. On a regular day, uh, I don't think so buddy. Today? Sold :)

Praise Be

Sunday afternoon, February 22, was warm (well, "warm" at 37 degrees) and sunny. All week everyone had agreed on the forecasted temperature but that it was supposed to rain all day. We, like many others, had been preparing for the certainty of a basement flood due to all the melting snow. I took the boys to Home Depot last week and we bought a sump pump and downspout extenders, so Jason could get the water flowing out and away from the foundation. He then spent Sunday morning getting the last of the snow off the roof and chipping ice out of the gutters while I got as much off the basement floor as possible.

Then, around 2 pm, the sun came out. I can't even begin to tell you. Along with the pleasant temperature, it was just so, so, completely wonderful. We could go outside! And play! It was a much needed end to school vacation week aka the longest week ever in the history of my life. So we suited everyone up, packed up the snowtube and sled, and drove over to Beaver Brook. We had a ball!

The Hunters came with us too! Ashton and Owen have been BFFs for their whole lives.

We did every combination of kid/parent/baby/sibling sledding imaginable and didn't leave until it started to get dark! 

There are a lot of smiles in those pictures. When we finally got home we enjoyed some good old après-sled time. Jason whipped up some Moscow Mules (notice my new copper mugs!) and he and Ashton relaxed in front of the fire.

It was a great winter day (FINALLY!)! Oh and this is a funny video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsX__Bn0xZs

Don't worry, it's back to single digit temps today. Happiness can be fleeting in winter ;)

Preschooler Gems

Every now and then I like to pepper these posts in. You know, the latest and greatest from the mouth of my 3 year old or certain behaviors that are on trend. A lot of these are cute and/or funny because of the sound of his voice or the way he pronunciates. Given this blog doesn't have audio, you might not fully appreciate, but I do and definitely want these kinds of things to look back on when he is no longer little.

I think perhaps our biggest hurdle lately is food. He will happily request "brequist", but never, and I mean never, wants to eat "wunch" or dinner. He only wants "tacks" (snacks). ALWAYS snacks. But the problem is, Ashton hates to be specific. He'll say he wants "something delicious", "something crunchy" or "something tasty" and I'll bend over backwards making suggestions, listing every stupid thing in our cabinets, and he will just say "No, I want a TACK". It's like, crackers and apples and cheese sticks ARE snacks!! "Snack" is a general term!! AHHHH!!!

Oh, and he won't eat a grilled cheese. But he WILL eat toast with melted cheese on it. You have to market it correctly. It makes me impossibly crazy so I'll tell you a story that pretty much sums up what it is like to have to feed a preschooler every day.

So, we've had a lot of snow days and for whatever reason, sick of the usual routine, we decided to have pancakes on Sunday morning. I think Ashton's had a pancake maybe twice, ever, and both times at Grandma and Grandpa's house. So this was a very big deal, he pulled the stool over to watch it cook on the stove, he was super excited and wouldn't stop talking about his special brequist and then...can you believe it? That pancake, well, it turned out to be round.  This shape was so offensive, so completely reprehensible, that Ashton got off the stool, walked over to the stairs, sat down and cried. Honestly, he wailed his head off for 10 minutes. We tried to get through to him but it's hard to talk when you are choking on snot and tears. All we knew was that he could not tell us what he DID want, just that he didn't want his pancake to be round. We left him on the stairs to howl.

After several minutes, while Ashton was still carrying on in the other room, Jason went ahead and whipped up a dinosaur.

I guess it could also be a lobster, depending on your point of view.

With grand ceremony, we presented this new pancake with oooo's and ahhhh's and wasn't it going to be fun to eat this one? Look it's a dinosaur! ROAAAAAAR!!

Gradually, Ashton's tears dried up as he admired his dinosaur-lobster. He said dinosaurs have sharp teeth (like this fact made the pancake more legit). He carried the plate around for awhile. He showed it to Alex. I kept waiting for him to take a bite but he would not touch it. So precious was this new pancake that you know what he did? He went ahead and ate the round one. The round one!! The one that had caused so much pain and suffering 30 minutes earlier. It was just so...typical.

So what's the lesson here. Basically, 3 year olds are landmines and when in doubt, make them a dinosaur-lobster pancake and all their other problems will pale in comparison to its magnificence.

How about some other favorites lately.

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I reached into the backseat of the car and handed Ashton his sunglasses on a particularly bright day. He put them on and said, "Oooo! I see houses! And trees!"

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Me: Wow, we did a lot today. You had a big day!
Ashton: No, Mommy, I didn't. I had a little day.

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My daddy's Jason. I like Jason. He knows ev-we-fing (everything).

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Two favorite questions, asked almost constantly:
"You like it?"
"You happy? Are you happy Mommy?"

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"I'm Batman!" (swings stick)
"You are?"
"Yeah, I'mma gonna bat you!"

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Another favorite question: "Why?"

"Put this in the trash please."
"Why?"
"Because it's trash."
"Oh."

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At the rest stop on the highway: "Is this the pee store?"

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"I need to eat brequist. So I have ENGERY for school."

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"What shape is a shadow?"

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I showed him how to put ice cream on a cookie and held it out so he could take a bite. All he could say was, "Whoaaaa". I agree, it's a lifechanging concept. 

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While we are on cookies, we had a snowflake sugar cookie and Ashton held it up and said "This is from Frozen! She sings, 'Let it goooo!' And then this comes!" (He didn't know the word for snowflake ;) )

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Whenever we are all are on the couch, hanging out in our bed, or generally close together, Ashton wedges himself between me, Jason and Alex and sings, "Fam-leeeeee!"

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Cinnamon is ciminin, gingerbread man is gentleman, and in general "l's" are "w's". He calls going to sleep at night his long nap.
"After my wong nap, I'm gonna wake up and have a PANCAKE!"

Pancakes are definitely his new thing now after the dinosaur-lobster. Poor Jason, trying to make new animals every morning haha. I should see about some molds or something. Anyway, there is always a round one with his regular breakfast on one plate, and the prized special pancake (today, a llama?) on a separate plate.

He eats the round one every morning and never touches the animal so we secretly feed it to Alex after cleaning up his plates. Alex isn't picky. Yet ;)

Another day, another blizzard.

I'd just like everyone to know, we have officially reached the point of ridiculousness when it comes to the winter of 2015. I'm not sure how many feet of snow we've gotten. A million? It's hard to measure when you are BURIED UNDERNEATH IT. Here's the view out our front window:

In all honesty, we woke up this morning and it was the first time I have been compelled to take some pictures. I'm sure Jason will have much more impressive shots after he ventures out to snowblow, but here are a couple videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3TZ_mDDgoE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DjUhPuoxIg

And a few photos.

Hard to grasp the scope, but there is more snow than anyone can believe. So here we are, 10 AM on Sunday morning, housebound yet again, so we are trying to see how Ashton does after a day in underwear.We told him we are out of diapers so he can either be wet in his clothes or go on the potty. It's not going well so far. Accident count: 2.

If anyone needs us, we'll be here hanging out with Conan O'Brien. 

I actually thought of a Valentines Day poem yesterday: Rose are red, violets are blue, Alex- your hair! What shall we do??

Thank you.

Valentines Day 2015

Let's get back to the rosier side of life, shall we? Happy Valentines Day! You know what actually didn't make me the happiest though? Finding out on Wednesday that I needed to send twenty seven valentines in with Ashton on Friday for his classmates. I can't believe it, but I pulled it off again folks. I'm not sure if you remember last year's feline holograms, but I overcame that hurdle with stuff I had on hand and this year was even better!

Let's begin with the movie Despicable Me. Actually, let's begin with the fact that our house is very far from being "screen-free", even though I vowed we would be for a long time. Bahahaha. The minute Ashton turned 2 and Mickey kept him still and quiet for 24 minutes, the TV became the easiest crutch going. It was very innocent for awhile, basically Mickey-only and simple shows like Curious George. Nothing too fast or loud. BOY has that changed, and now I can only get the same desired result that Mickey once gave by putting on novel movies or programs that Ashton hasn't seen yet. Even Frozen - Ashton's seen it and therefore, pays it no attention when I press play.

So what's a mom to do? Delve into my free Streampix Comcast stuff, that's what. Under "Kids", "Movies", and there was "Despicable Me 2". I have no idea what this movie is about, but Ashton loves it, calls it "Two Yellow Guys" (referring to the minions) and has watched it several times (in part). WIN.

As luck would have it, the fruit snacks Jason has been buying at BJ's are ALSO Despicable Me themed (purchased before Ashton's love affair with the actual movie), and we had a giant unopened box in the basement. Do you smell a Valentine coming on?

I quickly googled "Despicable Me Valentine printable" or something like that, found a template, added some text boxes for the kids' names and voila!!

So that was actually the one that I made for Ashton as a surprise. Of course he did not notice but I know he loves those fruit snacks and was worried about giving them all away. So I wanted him to have a pack in his Valentine bag when he came home from school.

Anyway, I punched a hole in each card along with a pack of fruit snacks and tied it with a ribbon.

And gave Ashton the box to hold on to until we got to school. 

Little did I know, I was going to be the one to drop all the valentines in all the bags when we got there. Note to self: keep them in alphabetical order next year. 

We have no Valentines Day plans besides watching (sigh) more snow fall. I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten Jason anything and when that happens, I just remind him that he has these two little lovebugs because of me and what could be a greater gift than that. He never argues ;)

A funny thing happened on the way to the...

the...the...oh wait, we haven't gone anywhere. The past three weeks have been pretty much record-breaking. Let's take a look at our calendar of horrors.

The people that get this via email likely won't be able to read that very well, but the basic gist is, out of the past 14 "business days", 6 of them have been snow days and 3 of them have been sick days (of mine). I'm actually lucky because had those not been snow days, a lot of them would have been sick days. So it's been like an avalanche of snow and daaaaaaays stuck in the house with various sicknesses (mine, Ashton, and Alex's) all woven in. The part that makes mine difficult is that I was doing better, then worse, then better, then bad again and now finally, nearly mended, with the exception of the nagging lung pain of almost two weeks. I went back to the doctor this morning, tired of the sharp stabs every time I cough, move around, pick up the baby, etc. Turns out, it's unrelated to the pneumonia and we traced it back to two Saturdays ago when Ashton and I were playing and he jumped on me pretty hard. I do remember that that's when the pain started, but the doctor thinks I bruised a rib?? I have no clue, but it's annoying and there is nothing but round-the-clock Advil to put against it for now. I'm supposed to call her again in a week. 

Speaking of 24 hour meds, poor Alex, he is being pumped full of Advil and Tylenol on a rotating basis and Tamiflu twice a day. His influenza test on Tuesday was negative (he was vaccinated), but the pediatrician felt strongly about having him on Tamiflu as a general antiviral so he gets that too. We have been really keeping on top of his temperatures and his high fevers have been responding to the meds and lukewarm baths but when it's 3:30 am and you are stripping your baby to wet him down after the thermometer says 104.4, it's not fun. As you'd guess, he's also not eating and getting him to take his bottle is hit or miss. (On that front, I'm back to pumping enough so the $30 tub of formula I bought is just sitting in the cabinet. But having it gave me peace of mind when I was sick and not making enough for him.)

Anyway, with all the sickness and record-breaking snow, it has been a suffocating three weeks. The only thing I can really say is thank goodness Jason was home so much. Brae Burn has been closed since January 24 (opens back up tomorrow) and he used all his leftover 2014 vacation time, which has meant he was around to help with the boys when I was feeling sick and needed to lay down, he was around to snowblow every time we got a storm, and in general provide me with some sane company (Ashton turned into a pinball awhile ago). Jason has saved me.

I'd like to just say one last thing in the name of health, as it's been a main subject in this post. I'm obviously a mom, and therefore a member of several online community groups, including a couple on Facebook. The war over vaccinations is at an all-time high, tempers are flaring over the measles outbreak, the anti-vaxxers are being blamed and it's ugly out there. Both Ashton and Alex are as up to date on their vaccinations as they can be and I have never batted an eye over the pediatrician's suggested course of shots. I am so pro-vax that I would get out on the street and hold a sign if someone asked me to. Ashton, however, did not get the flu vaccine due to his egg allergy. They wouldn't give it to him because of an allergic reaction (itchy tongue) to an egg exposure last fall. I actually plan to ask more about this at his annual allergy appointment next week. And Alex, while it took him two parts to get the flu shot, he has had it, but is too young for the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. This gives me anxiety on a daily basis. How, and I repeat, HOW can parents choose not to vaccinate and let their kids walk around so unprotected?? It is the WORST feeling in the world to know I can't/haven't been able to protect my children fully (yet) and they might be at risk because another child isn't vaccinated only because their parents have (usually stupid and unfounded) "concerns" about vaccines. I can't stand it. LITERALLY can't stand it. Unless you have a child that cannot get vaccinated for certain reasons (like my children: age, allergies, or other children, like those with autoimmune disorders, cancer, etc.) you have no excuse. I say that having read extensively everything you could use to claim vaccines aren't safe or "right" for your family and am not going to outline all that here or any rebuttals. But for the love of children everywhere (our entire population, really), please vaccinate. Vaccinations are a great privilege of our society, and if you don't take advantage of this, quite frankly, you're selfish. Your decision affects EVERYONE and if we ever met, I would tell you this. Nothing is more important than the safety of my children and I would have zero tolerance for anyone who jeopardizes them by making the stupid decision not to vaccinate. Sorry, it's true, and I felt like this blog should know. Being sick and stuck in the house has clearly made me angry lately.

That's it for now. If the storm this weekend drops the snowfall they are predicting, you can expect my next blog post, entitled THE END OF DAYS, to be my last. #kidding #notkidding

Open wide...

Ashton took his first trip to the dentist today! He was totally ready to give up mid-procedure but then pulled himself together and walked out with his head held high.

I know that they are pediatric dentists so they are totally used to the hesitant, scared little kids that come in, but the whole place was amazing. Ashton was so calm, I couldn't believe it. He sat in the big chair and they gave him this stuffed dinosaur with shockingly life-like human teeth, very strange creature this was, but Ashton took to it instantly and got busy brushing while the dentist counted his teeth. He has 20.

He did not want to take his coat off and he didn't want me to take mine off either. Like we weren't staying or something.

When she asked him "Do you brush your teeth in the morning or at night?" he told her "I brush my teeth when it's dark outside." She looked at me and I said, "I know, sigh, we only do it at night..." and got the "You really need to do it in the morning too, and start flossing" response. Add it to the list...

So she counted his teeth and we hit a serious snag when it came to the rotating toothbrush. Ashton was petrified of it and after 4 teeth, got out of the chair and cried that he wanted to go home. It took a good 5 minutes of coaxing (and bribing with prizes) but I eventually got him back up there, she finished and did his fluoride treatment and that was that!

He got to take home a blue glittery toothbrush (not the one in Dino's mouth), some stickers, a little glider airplane, a pencil and a tattoo. And some fun flossers.

I fully expect that he will announce to his teachers tomorrow morning that he has shiny new teeth. Someone get me some sunglasses!

Anyway, we go back in 6 months, and 6 months after that, and 6 months after that, FOREVER. Great post huh? Haha ;)