Flying without a net, we put him in underwear and shorts and prepared ourselves.  The first few days were wet and puddle-ridden.  And also practically house bound, which pretty much sucked.  Alex would decide he was just too busy to take a potty break and would pee himself and not even tell us.  One time I found out when I picked him up.  He took me right into the hallway and showed me the accident scene…”see?  Wight dare!”  Then we got down to one accident a day, usually in the afternoon and finally last week a totally dry day. 

Enter the poop problem.

Yesterday, at 9am he told me he had to poo poo.  As soon as I put him on the potty, he clenched his buns and refused to go.  All day this went on, with me spending most of the morning in the bathroom either trying to get him to sit, helping him get dressed, or washing hands.  And of course, cleaning up the pee accidents that would happen because he refused to sit on the potty for fear of what might fall out. 

He managed to hold it ALL DAY until he got into his nighttime diaper.  That’s stamina right there, but also makes for a miserable kid, 4 wet pairs of pants, and a mommy wishing she had less whine and more wine.

What makes a kid comfortable dropping his friends off at the pool?  Bribes didn’t work.  I am way too OCD to let him run around without a diaper – I can’t stand the thought of anyone’s bare ass on my couches.  I don’t even like it when people sleep on my couch. 

And he is potty training on the toilet, not a little chair - mainly because I would rather wipe someone’s butt than constantly be washing out that stupid cup.  Isn’t the whole point so you can just flush it away?

Just like everything else in our house, figure out the approximate time to accomplish a task and then double it to fix repairs made by previous owners, who like us had no idea what they were doing, but unlike us were too stupid to hire someone to fix things.  This picture is showing our old floor, and the floor underneath that, and then the subfloor which revealed itself to be not only water damaged but patched with drywall compound.  I guess it’s a step above the toothpaste I used to patch wall holes in college.

The fridge is currently residing in the dining room.  And also the dishwasher is on the front porch and we have a great black hole where the dishwasher used to be.  Luckily we have a contractor who also happens to be a good friend or ours and since he will likely be eating dinner in the completed kitchen and visiting regularly he has a vested interest in making sure this little project is done right and so we have a new subfloor!  Woot!

Amazing the things you get excited about when you’re smack in the middle of renovation hell.  That was yesterday.  Today the new floor went down and the new subfloor didn’t like it and they are trying to break up with each other by creating big air bubbles everywhere.

Next, I’ve finally updated the blogroll and have many lovely new additions.  I looked at it the other day and it’s been so long since I’ve done anything blog-maintenance related that I couldn’t remember how to edit it.  It seriously took me an hour tonight to figure out how to update the links.  This update was prompted by an award from one of my yogi friend/bloggers, Janaki. 

A Lemonade Award is given to bloggers who show a positive attitude, gratitude, and a willingness to share their ideas, support and online friendship. In other words, people who make lemonade when they get lemons!

Hooray!  I’m going to break the rules of the award and nominate everyone in my new blogroll.  I did some serious trimming this time, and although there are a lot of blogs left that I only stalk there are a lot of community friends too.

Finally, moving on to potty training.  Today was our first accident free day.  Another WOOT!  Of course the poor kid hasn’t pooped in two days because he likes to wait for the diaper, but it’s progress.  I need to write a whole other post documenting this from start to finish because I think that it’s entirely possible that I’m going to block out the first painful weekend and not remember the basics when it’s Emily Kate’s turn.

I called Brett when I got to work to let him know. “That’s funny,” he said, “because after you left this morning Alex kept pointing to the counter and saying, ‘Mama sell-e-sone! Mama sell-e-sone!’ I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

What’s that Lassie? Fire?

I started thinking that maybe I should pay more attention when Alex is trying to tell me things. His speech gets better every day, but I often find myself having this conversation:

Alex: Tuck tuss!
Me: Tractor?
Alex: NOOOO! Tuck tuss!
Me: Um, traffic?
Alex: Nope. Nope. Tuck TUSS!
Me: Building? You dropped your shoe? Emily Kate?
Alex: NOOOOooooooo…TUCK. TUSS!
Me: Ohhhh, school bus. Gotcha.
Alex (exasperated): Yee-aaah! Tuck tuss!

Usually these conversations take place in the car and turning around to look at him and see what he’s pointing at would cause me to rear end said school bus so I just nod and say, “Ohhhhh, OK. Uh huh.” Which makes me feel bad because this is my offspring dangit, we should be CONNECTED with our own special TWIN LANGUAGE.  Plus, he totally knows when I’m faking it.

What if I’m missing out on the secrets of the universe because I don’t understand? It’s obvious Alex has much better attention to detail than I do.  This is the kid who crawls around the kitchen floor sticking toast crumbs to his finger and putting them in the trash.  Perhaps by now I would have won the lottery if only I realized that when he’s counting he skips eight for a reason.

Miss Sue has told us that he runs to tell her when the dryer finishes, when the coffee maker is done brewing, and that the dog is barking. If he gets there in the morning and her daughter isn’t down for school yet, he inquires as to where she is.  She feels confident between that and his button pushing skillz that her household would run quite well without her should she need a vacation.

I have a feeling very shortly I’ll be hearing the one phrase that I’ll understand, “I told you so.”

Miz-Undastood…

Brought to you by Wordless Wednesday

Edited to add:  Brett, wonderful husband and loving father, took this photo.

This weekend I had planned to take the kids to visit Mall Santa.  I was going to do it by myself, and Alex is sick so I was fully prepared for some sort of meltdown that would make an awesome blog story.

At the last minute, Brett decided to join us so I don’t get to write about wrangling two kidlets alone through the holiday shopping mayhem of glitter and glee. 

We got to the mall early enough that our parking space was twenty feet from the door.  So no bemoaning the trek across frozen tundra.  And it was 60 degrees.  And sunny.

The kind family walking in front of us, instead of letting the door slam shut behind them and whack into the stroller which then would have wedged in the door, forcing me to herd Alex in with one leg while standing on the other trying to wrestle the wheels free…well, they held it for us.

I was prepared to wait in line, only for some stupid elf to tell me it was time for Santa’s smoke break to feed the reindeer right when it was our turn, like happened last year.

There was no line.  Santa and all the elves were waiting expectantly for a wee tot – any wee tot - to come and whisper wishes in their ears.

Surely, Alex would freak when he was plopped onto the lap of a big scary chubby guy with a beard, because after all – I hate beards so he would totally come by it naturally. 

Or maybe, instead of letting EK make up her own mind about whether Santa could hold her, he would showcase his protective big brother instincts like he did at daycare last week when one of the “hitters” came near her and he yelled, “NOOOOOO” as he slow-motion launched himself at the kid.

Apparently, feeling a little under the weather has taken all the fight out of the poor boy because I got this instead:

And this:

From 2008_12_12

Really, I have nothing to write about this trip, except how remarkably unremarkable it was.  How will I ever keep blogging if I have no drama, no tears, no intrigue?

“MAAAAMMMMAAA….OOOOOOHHHH!!!”

“Mama…coooheeeyyyah!” (Mama…come here!)

Escalating laughter…

“OOOOOOOHHHHH!”

“Waaahhhaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Finally, he came running to find me, grabbed my hand and led me to…

Note deflated cow in background…

Everyone is excited about the new washer.

(And the hair?  I know.  For the record I wasn’t the one who further butchered it fixed it.)

Alex runs to the top of the stairs, and clear as day says, “Daddy!  I’m ready!”

Whaaaaa?

First sentence.  It was awesome.  A smiley end to a happy weekend.

I say this because at work today, I couldn’t figure out how to get logged into one of our networks.  Another tech guy came over to help me and we fixed it, then immediately put on our blue jumpsuits and jumped around singing:

We had a problem but we figured it out
That’s what the Movers are all about
We’re havin fun let’s jump and shout-
COME ON!

At least in my head I did that.  Over and over again throughout the rest of the day.

When we get home in the evenings, the first thing Alex does is shout, “Mooboo!” which is short for “Mommy I would like to watch Imagination Movers please!” and then he hands me the remote and sits still as a statue for most of the episode.  At least until the end when he gets up and dances to this:

Catchy little tune those Movers have…now you can sing it too.  Over and over, until your only problem is how to get it out of your head.

Look how adorable!

 Then Beth went on vacation, and has been on vacation forever and Alex really needed a haircut, as evidenced below:

Look!  Cranky bedhead moptop!  And pun-tastic shirt!

Since Beth is showing no sign of returning from vacation, we figured we could take our chances and it couldn’t be that bad…after all, I gave passable cuts with no formal training right?

As evidenced below, it would appear that was an incorrect assumption.

There are no words to caption this photo.

Remind you of anyone?

(image credit supanet.com)

Yeah.  Perhaps the time is right for MY scissors to make a comeback.

From Meet the Herd

Moo.