All Aboard the Potty Train

Shortly after finishing breakfast this morning, Price walked over to me, took off his diaper and said, "No diaper, I want underwear."   After picking my jaw up off the floor (because just yesterday I was telling a friend that Price was no where near ready to potty train), and being impressed with my son's ability to express his desires both verbally and through action, it hit me that I really might have to potty train my kid. Before he goes to college.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the diaper.  I don't like how much they cost, I am bothered by all the space they take up in landfills (I swear if we have more children, I'm doing cloth diapers), and the little absorption gel thingys creep me out.  Because I want to see exactly how much the gel thingys can actually absorb  am cheap and eco-conscious, I tend to be a little lax in my diaper changing frequency.  Not poopy diapers mind you, those come off as soon as the smell arrives, but the wet diapers- well, he's not a girl, they don't bother him and they hold a lot.  So, most days he often goes several (and by several there have been days when several could mean as many as four) hours without a new diaper.

Until today.  Today when he decides, that since he is now sleeping in a big boy bed, he must also wear big boy underwear.  Today, when I had a meeting and several errands to run.  Today,when we are just a few days away from leaving for a long awaited vacation to a foreign country where I may have some difficulty asking where a restroom is since I don't speak the language.

Thankfully (I think this is a good thing, except when she tells me stuff I know, but don't want to do), my mom is a potty training master.  She could (and should) write a book on the subject.  And thankfully she was home every time I called her today to ask if it was normal for my child to pee everywhere, except in the potty, every 20 minutes or so.  And she assured me that it was and I just need to, for the next few (overly scheduled) hundred million days or so, take him to the bathroom often and reward him whenever he tinkles on the potty.  Hence, the jar of M&M's on the back of the toilet.  Yes, candy in our bathroom-  I find it oddly disturbing and cheerful at the same time.

Once we finally got home after he made a giant puddle in the middle of the BX food court at lunch and I had changed him into his fifth pair of (hastily purchased because the three existing pair we already owned obviously weren't going to cut it) new underpants and fourth outfit and second pair of shoes and cleaned up tinkle in my kitchen, living room (yes, Don if you're reading this he pee'd on the couch-but not on the cushions because he took those off so he could jump on the springs down on to the cushions), laundry room and all around his potty chair for all the poor aiming- we actually made it 3 whole hours without an accident!  Thanks in large part to the kitchen timer going off every 15 minutes to remind me it was time to go tinkle.

I never thought I'd miss changing a diaper, and we haven't even started working on pooping yet!

A Mother's Day

Friday I had a list a mile long of things I needed to get done.  I needed to run several errands, do some stuff around the house.  I had an agenda, I was going cross these items off my list and head into the weekend with a clean house, a stocked pantry and diaper drawer and no need to do anything I didn't want to do.  Then I woke up.

And, the day got away from me.  But not in it's usual way- there was nothing on the dvr containing a certain high school glee club doing a mash up that had to be watched, there was no endless hitting of refresh to see the latest Facebook updates, no friends who had dropped in.  Nope, Friday it was all about this...

Life has been busy lately.  I know, I live on a little island where there isn't much to do and I only have one kid and I don't work outside of the home, but it just seems like we are always doing something (which is fine and a big preference to being at home all day, never leaving and doing nothing).  But even when we're home thanks to my dynamic time management skills it doesn't always seem like I spend good, quality time with Price.  I encourage him to play in his room while I clean the kitchen, or I let him watch 30 more minutes of TV so I can empty the fridge of the leftovers from Thanksgiving Christmas.  But we don't always do stuff together, and I sometimes (a lot) feel guilty that playing trains for hours on end isn't my favorite thing in the world and he ends up getting my very divided attention (perhaps this is good life training for him?).

Friday, when I was roused from bed before Reveille by my chirpy alarm clock saying repeatedly, "Hi Mommy!  Mommy hi! Hello!  Mommy pick you up."  I dragged myself out of bed and thought, "Well, at least we'll be able to get everything done today."  Then 7:00 rolled around and I had already put my two year old in time out once, and I thought, "This is going to be a very long day."  And I hadn't even figured out what to have for breakfast, but knew it couldn't be cereal, because that's what the kid got for dinner the night before.

So, being of sound mind and I body, I thought biscuits would be good and P wanted to help me make them and I thought that would be fun.  Suddenly, it was after 9:00 and the biscuits were just coming out of the oven.  Where had the previous two hours gone??

We sat down for biscuits and I had some legitimate stuff to do on the computer and Price wanted to color.  Great, I can do my work while he makes art work.  When I looked up from what I was doing, I realized he wasn't coloring, he was peeling all of the paper off his Crayons.

Notice that getting dressed was not something that occurred in the mysterious two hour period

When I saw that mess, it reminded me of a craft we used to do all the time when I was young and had recently seen on a blog where they bumped it up a notch- melting broken Crayons together to form large multi-colored colors.  And I thought (once again, my AMAZING sense of timing rears its ugly head), that won't take long.

So we commenced to de-paper some crappy Crayons and break them into small pieces.  Of course, once the objective was to actually remove the paper, it was no longer fun and became my job. But it was fun for both of us to break the Crayons and place them in the molds (thank you $1 aisle at Target, and thanks to my mother-in-law for spotting them and sending them to us Target deprived folks).  It was a good counting and color identifying activity for Price.

Once all the molds were filled,

We placed them on a cookie sheet and put them in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  We (I) talked about how heat can changes things from hard to soft, and I let him peek in the oven about half way through so he could see the changes.

When all of the Crayons were melted,

We put them into the fridge for about an hour, and I explained how sometimes cold can change liquids to solids, but the whole concept was a little advanced.

And finally, we got this-

Multi-colored heart shaped colors, that work.  I forgot to take a picture of the art that ensued from drawing with a heart.  But somehow another hour and a half disappeared.  And then it was lunch time and then it was nap time and I just gave up on getting anything that I needed to get done done.

And then it hit me, that I actually did accomplish what I needed to.  I spent most of the day with Price, listening to him, talking with him, playing with him.  We hadn't had a day like that in so long and it was needed, but it's hard when to the rest of the world those accomplishments aren't tangible.  It wasn't on my to do list to spend quality time with my kiddo and maybe it should have been, so I could have checked it off and not felt like I was being unproductive.

My PC Problem

It stormed here today.  For the first time since moving to Guam, I actually heard thunder while sitting in my house.  It was so loud, our windows shook.  It was perfect lazy weather and we had official orders to stay indoors... Once Price went down for his nap, I tried to busy myself around the house so I didn't take a nap too (it was perfect napping weather, but when I take naps I stay up too late then get up early with the kiddo, then find myself wanting to take a nap the next day- it's this never ending cycle).  Since I wasn't going to sleep and still don't have a book to read, I decided to bake.  I've been seriously jonesing for chocolate.  And decided to make the BEST. BROWNIES. EVER!  I first made these brownies when we lived in Louisiana, about a million years ago.  These brownies are super easy to make and sooooo good.  I haven't made them in a while, but when the Commissary actually had Ghirardelli Baking Bars (to actually find a bar of baking chocolate of any variety at the Commissary is a win, but this was a BIG win), I bought several and knew I'd be making these brownies soon.  Today was the perfect day...

If you don't like dense, fudgy brownies that are crispy around the edges and are perfectly bittersweet you are weird and something is wrong with you, these brownies aren't for you.  But if you do like what I described, follow this recipe:

Ghirardelli Classic Chocolate Brownies (recipe from Ghirardelli website)
1/2 cup(s) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
4 ounce(s) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Baking Bar (I use the bittersweet bar because I like the taste better)
1/2 cup(s) (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup(s) firmly packed light or dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon(s) pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
3/4 cup(s) plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon(s) baking powder
3/8 teaspoon(s) salt

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour an 8-inch square baking pan.Chop the 4 ounces of semi sweet chocolate bars into i-inch pieces.In the top of a double boiler or in a heatproof bowl over barely simmering water, melt the 4 chopped chocolate and butter, stirring occasionally until smooth. Remove the pan from the heat and let cool to room temperature (I don't let it get quite to room temp, I think  the sugar combines better if the chocolate is still a little a warm, but not so warm that it cooks the eggs when added) . Stir the brown sugar and vanilla into the chocolate mixture. Add the eggs and mix well.In a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly fold the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture, mixing well until blended. Stir in the chocolate chips and pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until a tester comes out clean.

One day, I hope to take attractive pictures of food

By now, I'm sure you're trying to figure out what is wrong with my PC and what it has to do with this post..  My computer is fine.  I have another type of PC problem... PORTION CONTROL!  And not just when it comes to food, (although that is where it often rears its ugly head)

Umm... Yes, the brownies came out of the oven 6 hours ago, Don had one small slice and this all that is left (and I wonder why the scale isn't changing despite going to the gym 2-3 days a week and walking 30 minutes a day too).  I'm trying to make myself feel better that the recipe doesn't make very many brownies and after all I ate tonight, I won't feel like eating any more again. ever.

but with many, many things in my life.  I seem to have problems with moderation. You know like reading 3 books in less than 3 weeks, or maybe planting several hundred seeds in a window box garden and now having to find homes for many, many plants that I can't accommodate.  I also have portion control problems when it comes to planning events or taking on projects.  I just keep adding on and on (in my head) until they are too big and unmanageable, and I become overwhelmed and just want to curl up in a corner and cry and end up doing NOTHING that I originally wanted the way I originally wanted it.  The quote, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" comes to mind.  This is one of the things I dislike the most about myself.

I am hopeful that the longer I continue to go to the gym and exercise the less I will want food portions to fill me up (knowing full well it's not really the food I'm hungry for, but other areas of my life that need to be fulfilled), but I don't know what to do about the other aspects.  I'm not good at setting limits for myself.  I am not self-motivated.  I am not good at setting goals for myself.  I don't do well with setting deadlines for myself.
I do really well in a structured environment when someone else has set deadlines for me and has expectations- I always exceed those.  I don't know why I value other people's opinion of me more than my opinion of myself.

That's actually one of the things I struggle with the most as a stay at home mom.  There isn't really a validation system in place other than I'm raising a healthy, seemingly well-adjusted kid (if you can ignore his obsession with trains and his on going fondness for his penis).  Don is good about telling me that I'm a "wonderful mother" (his words), but I admittedly TOTALLY SUCK as a house keeper- so if this was an out of the home job, that actually paid me in more than sweet moments with my child and never ending full sinks of dirty dishes- would I be fired?  I never really feel like I am doing a great job, or even the best job that I can.  Some days, I feel like I'm Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Going through the motions in pretty much the same routine day after day.  And that's not necessarily a bad thing, I mostly like the rhythm that our days have.  I just wish I could make myself do more- be more.  I miss that part of working outside of the home, that I was more- I had a title that wasn't just wife/mom.

The Bond of Motherhood

I have a very dear friend who, after the birth of her second child, commented to me that she felt like she bonded with the second baby more quickly than she had with the first. And I remember thinking to my (at that time) childless self- how do you not instantly bond with your baby?  And then I had Price.

I loved Price from the minute he was born, but I was afraid of him- or more afraid of how I was supposed to mother him.  The first night we were in the hospital trying to get him to eat.  I was crying, you know being all jacked up on hormones, having a baby who wanted to sleep more than eat, and recovering from being in labor for 48 hours will do that to a girl- make her cry...  And he was swaddled.  He had been on this planet, in my presence for more than 7 hours and I hadn't bothered to look at his legs, his feet or his toes.  I just took Don's word for it that all 10 of his toes were there.  I was sitting on the bed when I unwrapped him, and I remember very clearly thinking, "Oh yeah, you can look at him, he's yours, you don't have to get permission from anyone to unwrap him."  Such a simple thing as looking at my own son's newborn body was huge to me.  But looking at him unwrapped, he was so much smaller than I thought he would be, he had long, skinny legs.  He was so fragile and I was so afraid that I was going to break him.  And yet, somehow without any kind of background check or test of our knowledge on raising a kid, they kept us a few days, made sure we had a proper car seat, gave us an intimidating list of things that could happen to the baby in the next few months and sent us on our merry way.

And then we got home and settled into the routine of having no routine and living in ordered chaos.  And since Price still didn't like to eat and only wanted to sleep, I became obsessed with reading about feeding methods, charting every ounce of formula ingested, every wet or poopy diaper produced.  My days seemed to revolve around pumping, making bottles, and pretty much turning into a sleep deprived zombie.  I was so keyed up on getting him to eat, I couldn't enjoy those early feedings because I would cry the whole time- I was sure I was either starving (trying to breast feed him) or poison him (when giving him formula from a bottle).  I let Don do a lot of the things I think most moms do- like bathe him, change him, swaddle him. Don was leaving in a mere six weeks and I wanted Price to bond with him so badly before he left, that I just kind of checked out unless I was trying to feed him.

And as much as I loved him, he made me tired.  He confused me.  He disrupted my life.  He made me scared to go to Target without an escort- I mean if I was there with just him, what would I do when the inevitable meltdown occurred and I had to rush out of the store with a screaming baby and a cart full of unpaid for items?  And there were days I questioned why had we wanted to do this so badly.

And then one day, he smiled and he quit melting down as often and I began to figure out how to soothe a meltdown.  I realized that he wasn't as breakable as I had built him up to be.  He and I figured out a good feeding routine.  And the love turned into like and the bond that was there from the beginning began to feel real.  And it grows stronger every day.

Happy Mother's Day.