Potty training FUN FUN!

I started trying with Vincenzo when he was two years old.  I treated it like a game and my theory was as long as we were both having fun, we’d stick with it.  After three months of cleaning human feces off of the carpet, underwear, car seats, legs, shoes, chairs, couches, beds, and other people, there came a day when I was NOT having fun.  We took a break and waited until he was a little older, and it still took awhile then.

After all that, I was going to wait to train Rocco until he was closer to three until someone pointed out that nursing a baby (which I’ll be doing then) and potty training go together as well as cats and, well, potty training.  So one morning last week I looked my opinionated, bull-headed, do-it-on-my-terms two-year-old square in the eye and told him how it’s going to be from now on.

Or maybe I just told him breezily that if he sat on the potty he could have a tic-tac.  Same dif.

On the first day we set the timer for every hour.  Early that morning he sat on the toilet but nothing came out, so Rocco did what Rocco does: he got mad.  I asked him if he wanted a cup of water to help him make some potty and he heartily accepted.  I poured him one and he promptly took it to the potty, dumped it in, and asked for a tic-tac.

Then he peed on his chair at breakfast and started bawling.

The timer went off an hour later and he sat on the potty.  Nothing came out, but 30 seconds after he left the bathroom BAM there it was.

Around lunch Rocco moved the entire training toilet into the kitchen so he could use it as a stepladder to reach some cookies we had baked that morning.  I wasn’t sure if I should give him a tic-tac for “using the potty” or not.

The timer went off about 15 times that day and not once, not even by accident, did Rocco make any magic happen in his toilet, though he made lots of magic everywhere else in the house.  I gave myself one of those “Well what did you expect?” looks and went to bed, bracing myself for day two.

That’s when things got weird.  The morning of the second day Rocco told me he had to go potty, so we went to his toilet and he did exactly that.  I have no idea how or why, but he hit the potty every time that day, without me setting the timer.  It’s been like that for a week now and I’m waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out of the toilet and tell me I’ve been punk’d, and then Rocco will pee all over us both.  Cue the laugh track.

Really, this is weird.

Poop, I should clarify, is quite different from potty and Rocco hasn’t quite gotten it down yet.  After he crapped himself at church on Sunday, our friend commented, “The sermon was especially moving today, wasn’t it?”  If only we could get the pastor to come preach from our bathroom.

Thoughtless Thursday: 1 kid+ 1 hat + 1,000 fall leaves

It is so hard to get this kid to look up for pictures—he’s always DOING something that involves looking down.  But the ol’ “Look, an airplane!” trick worked last week!

I lurvs him.

Around the house

It’s just one of those weeks where nothing is thematic.

1. This sign on my curling iron intrigues me:

I’m not sure why eyes got singled out.  If I burn, say, my hand on this curling iron, can I sue because I was not properly warned?  Or is my hand unable to be burned on this curling iron?  Or is there really some kind of fatal attraction between this particular curling iron and eyes?  Intriguing, people.  Intriguing.

2.  Actually, this is kind of thematic, as it’s another warning label, this time on Vincenzo’s battle ax.  It reads: “Do not poke or swing at people or animals.  Use away from breakable objects.”

I’d like to ask Nerf what exactly we are supposed to do with the battle ax, if not poke or swing at people.  Dress it up, give it a binky, and take it for a walk in a little baby buggy?

3.  My MIL got me this beautiful headband that, unlike every other headband I’ve owned, does not give me a headache when I wear it.  Unfortunately, every time I put it on this ends up happening:

The boy loves to accessorize.

Maternity Monday: Pregnancy is boring. Here’s some funny stuff instead.

1.) Just wanted to point out that the top searches that bring people to MrsMouthy’s blog are, in this order:

dirty panties, pictures of christening cakes, schoolgirls panties, baby baptism cakes, dirtypanties

So bless you, you sick, perverted, holy  people.  And to satisfy about 2/5 of you, here’s a little something I made this weekend:

2.) A couple Fridays ago I found myself with precisely 1.5 hours all to myself.  Here’s what I did:

*Unloaded the dishwasher by myself (Kevin, your Christmas shopping is done!)
*Took a bath and NO ONE CAME TO LOOK AT ME while I laid there in the water.  No one even filled up my tub with toy cars!
*Went to the bathroom and NOBODY CRIED
*Ate a pound of potato gnocchi drenched in a quarter pound of browned butter sauce and didn’t share it with anyone (though I kind of wished someone else had been there to blame it on)s
*Turned the TV on to a channel that was not 9

It all felt completely exhilarating and reckless.

3.) Vincenzo: “Mom, want to know how to spell “zebra?”  Just take a “z” and and a “bra” to it!”  For those who need the visual…

(Because as lacking in morals as the Internet is, I could not find a picture of a Z actually wearing a bra.)

(There is still some hope for humanity.)

Thoughtless Thursday: Scraps

Haven’t been blogging much this week but at least I’ve been doing something!

How I lie.  I didn’t do any of these this week.  I don’t think I’ve really done anything all week.  Is it just me?

Thanksgiving Day Tips

I’m not hosting Thanksgiving this year (truthfully, I’ve never hosted it) but I love to do all the cooking and fill my house with people, so we decided to cook up the works this weekend.  We called it Fakesgiving.   Today I ate a turkey, cranberry, and mayo sandwich for lunch and pumpkin pie for a snack, y’all.  BOO yah.

So in hosting a Fakesgiving I learned a few tips I thought I’d pass on to any of you who are hosting real Thanksgiving this year:

1.  The two hours you spend smelling turkey giblets boiling on your stove to make stock for the gravy are not worth it. Just use chicken stock and dare anyone to mention it.

2. Always invite a surgeon to your Thanksgiving dinner because he will do such an amazing job carving the turkey that you will tell him you wish it were you he were cutting up instead.

3.  Also invite over some Wisconsin Cheeseheads because they will bring a cheese ball that will end all other cheese balls.

4.  If you are having five children over, ages six and under, and they are all boys, be sure to stock up on Legos, swords, and Ibuprofen.

5.  If the five boys create a sovereign nation during the course of the evening, and they make themselves a flag out of paper and blue window markers, and you may later notice a copious amount of blue window marker on your living room carpet.  Do not cry.  Just remind yourself as you’re scrubbing the carpet that you are now one giant step closer to the hardwood floors you always wanted.

6.  If during dinner you notice that there is also blue marker on your expensive, beloved living room drapes, then go ahead and cry.

7.  Then have a slice of every kind of pie there is and you will forget about the drapes.

Happy Fakesgiving everyone!

Little Thoughts

1.  To answer Monday’s question of “Do I have what Rocco has or am I just pregnancy-nauseous?”  Yes and yes (thought I’m over it now).  Turns out I like sick days much better when it’s my kids who are sick and not me.

2.  This November, a lot of people are writing the things they’re thankful for daily on Facebook (or their blogs).  I thought about doing it, but would you really want to hear for 30 days straight that the thing I am most thankful for is Zantac?

3. I made a draft of my Christmas card/letter this week, and it’s kind of stressing me out that you all haven’t done so yet.

4.  In a rare moment of wisdom, I realized lately that I may not have the perfect house but I have the perfect home.  I am going to try to make that my mantra.

5.  And a Vincenzoism: “Mom, I came up with a new version of Rock, Paper Scissors!  It’s called Brown Baby Tears!”

Thoughtless Thursday:

We put on some nice sweaters and walked around our yard this weekend to get some Christmas card photos.  I think we’re going for the traditional, everyone semi-matching, just-standing-there-smiling family photo, so here are some of the other shots we got from the day.

(The last is a butternut squash from our garden.  It redeemed our little pea patch for me, after a frustrating summer where the deer ate all our beans/peas and the rabbits ate all our lettuce/carrots.)

Wordy with worry

It’s 4:30 AM.  Kevin and I have been up for an hour.  Our kids seem to have adjusted just fine to Daylight Savings Time…we’re not sure we’ll ever be quite the same again.

Part of the reason I can’t sleep is because I’m worried about Rocco.*  I worry about everything, so it’s no surprise.  I’m assuming there is a direct correlation between the amount one worries about one’s kids and how well one’s kids turn out, and at this rate, mine are going to be president of the United States.  And also France.

Anyway.  Rocco is a hilarious kid.  He has a whole bag of tricks he knows will make us laugh (Funny Face and the Duck Walk, to name a couple), and he pulls them out whenever he wants.  More often, he’s funny without trying to be–like the other day when Vincenzo was at school and Rocco was making a humming noise that he knows his brother doesn’t like.  He’d hum a bit, then yell at himself angrily, “Rocco please don’t do dat!!”  then start humming again.  The kid is a party.  He has a huge vocabulary that includes the words “Delorean” and “thingy.”  He can recognize anyone by the car he/she drives.

I worry, though, because “no” never quite means “no” to him.  If I tell Rocco not to touch the stove, he interprets it as, “Don’t touch the stove for this exact one second in your life, but after that go balls out touching it.”  He thinks it’s funny to push Vincenzo, or to try to rip a book out of my hands over and over and over again, or to bang on the computer when I’m trying to use it.  We tell him things like, “Stop!” and, “That hurts!” and, “Wait your turn!”  All he ever says is, “Dat funny!”  None of us are laughing.

He passes out the “sorrys” like they’re car wash coupons, so we’ve started giving time outs.  The weird thing is, he likes them.  In fact, this weekend he kept trying to take a toy Vincenzo had and I said, “Stop, Rocco, or you’ll need a time out.”  He got all excited until I told him he doesn’t need one yet and he had a mini temper tantrum because I didn’t give him a time out. 

It’s just so different from raising our first son, who took “no” so seriously that “maybe” meant “no” as well.  It took Vincenzo four years (and a lot of hair-pulling from me) to ever tell anyone he was sorry, and time outs were so traumatic they would have made the Super Nanny cry.

I project Rocco and his strong will out to the nth degree and I’m worried about having a teenager who thinks that messing with other people and their stuff is funny, and who breaks the rules when his parents tell him he can’t do something.  I don’t know how to make “no” important to him, but I know it’s important to do.

But it’s really your problem, America.  And France.  After all, he’s your future president.

 

*The other part is because we went to bed at 8:30.

Maternity Monday: Nausea Loves Company

Rocco woke up at 3 this morning, sick.  We went into his room and he showed us a pile of vomit on his bed and said, “Me did a little heartburn.”  Poor guy.

I admittedly relished our sick-induced stay-at-home in our pajamas day. I’m trying to figure out if I’ve got what he’s got, too, but it’s hard because I feel like I have the stomach flu all the time…when I’m sick it just feels like I have the flu worse.  No matter though; I’m enjoying the excuse to cover the living room with blankets, pillows, books, and toys and have an all day play date with Rocco. 

Who am I kidding?  The living room was already covered in blankets, pillows, books and toys.