Jinxed!

Okay, so I just bragged yesterday about how great a job Grant is doing with potty training. He hardly ever has accidents, remember? Since we started potty training, he's accidentally wet himself maybe four times (and the last time was a couple weeks ago). Well, after Dean got home yesterday afternoon, we were all sitting in the den.....Grant was playing with a bunch of his cars and other toys (he had them sitting on the couch in front of him), and he turned around to face us. His pants were all wet! If I believed in jinxes, this would be a prime example!

Then before his bath, he mentioned having to go pee-pee but said he didn't want to go in the toilet. I think I've heard that it's not uncommon for kids to relapse and decide they don't want to use the potty for a while. But today it's been so far, so good (maybe I shouldn't have said that!).

Potty training- done! (for the most part)

Grant did a remarkably good job with potty training.....I would say that we're mostly done, except for at naptime and bedtime. I've been so relieved (no pun intended!) at how easy it's been, maybe because we didn't try to start him too early. Since he started wearing underwear a few months ago, he's had just a handful of accidents. I always envisioned potty training being this months-long process of hurrying to the toilet every half-hour, changing wet underwear four times daily, etc. Thankfully it wasn't like that. If he has a diaper on, he will never go into the bathroom or tell us that he has to go. He just uses the diaper. That's why I never used pull-ups with him; I figured he would just treat them as diapers (and very expensive diapers, at that!). So we just went straight to underwear, and now I'm glad we did.

Now when he has to go potty, he just disappears into the bathroom, and usually doesn't even say anything to us. He doesn't like for us to help him, and will tell us to leave if we try to come in! Until recently he'd strip completely naked (except for his shirt) before climbing onto the toilet, even though I tried to show him how to just pull his pants and underwear down. Just before Christmas, I sent him to school with underwear for the first time. When I picked him up, his teacher said, "he took all of his clothes off when he went to the bathroom!" Oops! I hope he didn't walk back out into his classroom naked waist-down when he was finished (like he does at home!).

Anyway, I know his teachers have worked with him on this, and now he's gotten better about leaving his clothes on. And he still comes out of the bathroom exclaiming, "I went pee-pee/poopy in the potty! Now can I have some candy?" (We've rewarded him with candy from the very beginning of this process, so now he still expects it. The problem is that Drew also wants candy whenever he sees Grant get some. I feel like I'm giving out candy all day!) Grant's current favorite candy is Starbursts......he tells us that he should receive one piece for going pee-pee, and two for poopy. But we're trying to phase this down considerably......that is a lot of sugar!

And one last thing.....I have also been really pleasantly surprised how well Grant does when we're out. We'll go to do errands and he might mention to me that he has to go pee-pee. So I'll ask him to try to wait.....and sometimes it's a while before we finally find a restroom. But he always seems to do fine. I guess this proves that he was just at the right age. So glad to have Grant's diaper days mostly behind us!

Roll Tide!

We are super excited that Alabama won the national championship game last night!! I believe we watched almost every single one of Alabama's plays this season (I think maybe one or two games weren't on tv?). I've become an Alabama fan anyway since marrying Dean, but by the end of this year I knew most of the players' names and even could recognize them by their numbers. They seemed like a high quality group of guys.....Dean keeps up with all of the Alabama message boards and articles, and he's told me some impressive stuff about the players (of course I know Texas also had a lot of great guys on their team). So it was great to see them win! I know it would have been a completely different game if Colt McCoy hadn't been injured.....that was a shame. And it turned into a much closer game than it should have been, with McCoy being out! The only sad thing now is that there's no more college football for another 7 months. :(

These pictures are from an earlier game this season; Grant was in big time fit-throwing mode last night, so he went to bed before the game even started!

We had a fun week. The boys and I went into town on Tuesday and ended up going to the zoo in the afternoon. We went to the Childrens' Zoo for the first time.....it's hidden in the back and we've never known about it. Our favorite animals by far were the sea otters......those two little guys were so funny! The instant we walked up, they both jumped in the water and started doing flips right in front of us. The boys got such a kick out of them. And there were two giant porcupines! And a playground too, which of course makes the trip almost worth it in itself (at least for Grant). Maybe next time we'll do the petting zoo.....I was never a fan of those and Grant hasn't been either. I think Drew would love it, but I kind of avoided it this time (he didn't know any better)!

Then yesterday, it was 10:30am and we had already completed my one errand of the day (Half Price Books). I was driving around trying to think of something (anything!) we could do that would keep us away from the house for a little longer.....and something other than just going into a random store, where the boys have very little patience and I usually end up leaving frustrated at them! (And of course, for the last month, we've had basically the same problem as we had in the summer.....it has been SO cold, making it difficult to do outdoorsy things. We played in our backyard maybe two times in all of December....crazy.)

So we were driving down past NASA, and I thought we'd check out the Space Center. I went ahead and got a 1-year pass for $23, and we had a fun time! There's very little that's actually appropriate for kids as young as ours (I guess that's why they don't charge for kids under 4). There was a mock-up rocket that we were sitting in when the screen said something about a countdown to blastoff. Grant said, "I want to get out of here. It's about to blast off." There was also a mock-up space shuttle that you can walk inside, but he wouldn't go in there. He thought it was going to blast off too! Overall, it seems like a lot of the hands-on exhibits are outdated. Grant doesn't know any different now; he just likes to press all of the buttons randomly. But I think an 8-year-old might get frustrated because some of the exhibits don't really seem to work! But for $23, hopefully it will at least give us a place for them to run around every once in a while!

It was a bummer today.....I was supposed to go to dinner tonight with a few girls for Sierra's birthday. But Dean is working late......some of their product froze today with the cold weather, so they've been trying to get it back to normal. I was going to mention this earlier this week: this is his first week in a completely new position. He was transferred to a different plant (basically the same commute), and his first day was Monday. This plant is known to have a lot of breakdowns like this. Oh no!! It becomes really hard to find things to do by myself with the boys in the evenings when I've been with them all day already. I hope this doesn't happen a lot!

I went to wash my face a few minutes ago, and didn't realize until I splashed water into my face that I still had my glasses on! I need some sleep!!

Practicing.....

I'm practicing exporting pictures from Picasa into the blog.....thanks to those of you who wrote comments and emails about that. I uploaded Picasa today and it already found all of my pictures....and now it's scanning them....I guess for faces? Anyway, these are just a few random pictures from Christmas day. The viking hat was a gift from Santa, along with a viking sword (Santa found these at Disney World). Grant loves his sword, especially.....I'm sure pictures of it will appear on the blog someday. And for a sword, it's not bad, because it's made of foam and he most likely can't severely injure Drew with it.

A few days after Christmas, we found some new bedding for Grant. I've been looking for a quilt/comforter since he moved into his twin bed in the summer, but everything is so darn expensive! We found this set at Bed, Bath and Beyond......it wasn't expensive and I think it looks great in his room (these sheets aren't the ones that came with the comforter). So that night Drew crawled into Grant's bed and laid down as if he belonged there.

Yay new year!

I'm not one of those people who usually gets especially excited about a new year.....if I make a resolution, it's just in my head, and not something that I hold myself accountable to. But this year, I feel like I'm genuinely excited about putting 2009 behind me and making a fresh start in a lot of ways.

2009 was just plain hard.....of course we had many great moments I'll remember for the rest of my life. But oh my......I never thought day-to-day life could get so frustrating! And then when I felt so very frustrated, something else would happen on top of that! At the beginning of the year, Grant had just turned two, and Drew was 3 months old. Life with two kids wasn't too hard yet, because Drew was still such a little baby and slept so much. But around March, I remember starting to feel overwhelmed.....now I had two kids with two different schedules. And Grant (my very strong-willed boy anyway) was a two-year-old, meeting all expectations of the horrible behaviors associated with that age!

When I look back, I think the hardest part for me in transitioning from one to two kids was the change in my free time. And I'm starting to get used to this.....now Drew is a toddler and he and Grant play together a lot. So I can get some things done while they're playing. And at least they nap together....and Drew's naps seem to be getting a little bit longer now (knock on wood!).

And mostly, I'm just trying to remember that this is such a short stage, in the scheme of things. Instead of worrying about falling behind on scrapbooking/documenting their lives, I need to just enjoy them when they're little. And instead of feeling sorry for myself that every trip inside of a store has to be super short (no time for browsing these days!), I try to remind myself that in less than five years, the boys will both be in school and I'll have all the time I want to look around a store. And I'll probably wish I could go back to these years again (well, maybe not....we'll have to see!).

So one of my goals for 2010 is to really maximize the time I spend with my kids....to try to think of fun, out-of-the-box things to do. Because we have so much fun when we do stuff like this....it's just hard to think of those things on a moment's notice.

Here are a few more "resolutions" that have come to mind.....although maybe "goals" would be a better word. I am not completely resolved to doing these, but it would sure be nice! And maybe since I'm writing them, I will hold myself more accountable to them:

1. Read two classic novels. I read Jane Eyre when I was pregnant with Drew, and I LOVED it! In 2009 I hardly read anything. I'm thinking I might read a Charles Dickens book first....

2. Invite people over to our house for dinner once a month.

3. Read my Bible somewhat regularly! It has been so hard to do this with little kids....I barely can drag myself out of bed when they wake up (at 6:30). Then during their naps, I have all these other things I want to get done....you know, important things like blogging! But seriously, when I try to take a break and read my Bible during naps, it's hard for me to focus because I am thinking of my list of other things running through my head.....

4. Figure out a better system for storing/enhancing pictures. I want to use Picasa but I'm still a bit confused by it....it seems like it has so little space, and I take tons of pictures. Erin P, if you're reading this, I might need your help with this....

5. I also want to use the blog to record funny or memorable things that happen day-to-day. Two years ago at new year's I saw an idea in a magazine: it suggested blogging about one great thing that happens every day, even if it's just something funny your three-year old says. I've always wanted to do this. I'm not hoping to do this every day, but I want to at least make some attempt!

Happy New Year, everyone!!!