The Day Just Didn't Start Off Right

Sickness is lurking in the house. Both the kids are stuffy and coughing and the bug has finally bitten me. I haven't been sleeping well since Adam left for Georgia on Saturday night, and I think my immune system has suffered. Anyway, I awoke, as usual, to the kids at 7 AM sharp begging for food. There is no food in the house. I have some cereal and milk, a half a loaf of bread, and a handful of past due clementines. I was feeling quite awful. I didn't fall asleep till around 3 AM, I had a splitting headache, my nose was stuffy, and my throat had a small fire in it. I gave the kids some cereal and headed back to bed.

I did not want to get out of bed. Synnove has had a ravenous appetite lately, and kept coming in to ask for more food. Usually, there is some granola bars or crackers or SOMEthing that the kids can get themselves to eat...but like I said before, the cupboards are empty. I allow her some fruit snacks. A bit later she comes in again begging for food. She eats what's left of the clementines. I'm tapped out. I need to make the trip to Longview to go to Winco, but the car is not sounding so good. I wish I had a better car...I'm really wishing that today. I'm wishing HARD. I'm wishing $10,000 will fall down from heaven. I wish I would have won that beautiful white Camry at the fair last year! *sigh*....I digress. By now it's 10:30 and I finally decide that I can no longer stay in my bed. I know...I'm a terrible and neglectful mother.

My head is aching pretty badly. I make some eggs so that I don't have to take medicine on an empty stomach. Synnove devours half of them and asks for more. It's almost lunch...she'll have to wait.

I head downstairs to get some clothes for Soren. I check out Synnove's room first...still a mess after her so-called cleaning yesterday. I hate a dirty room....but I guess the time is coming that I just have to let it go. It's her responsibility now. I can nit-pick till I'm hoarse, or I can accept that her version of clean is not mine. ANYway, back to Soren's room. I walk in to find the entire contents of his closet on the floor. In a somewhat ticked, yet exhausted voice, I ask Synnove..."what happened here?" Synnove replies, before even entering his room, "Soren did it." Oh really? Right. Anyway, I call down Soren who is 99% honest 99% of the time and ask him what happened. He says, "I didn't do it, Synnove did." Then, the blame game continues for a minute or two. I've caught Synnove lying quite a few times in the past several months, and it's so disappointing and frustrating. I'm trying not to sound too angry (not really working), and ask Synnove SEVERAL times not to lie to me and to tell me if she did it or not. She eventually says "Soren and I did it." Oh really? Right. Either way, Synnove lied, so she had to get punished. I won't go into detail...but disciplining Synnove always ends worse than it begins. And that is always more frustrating than the original offense.

I'm just too tired and in too much pain to try to get the kids to participate in cleaning up the mess, so I clean it up myself. Under the mountain of clothes I find one of Soren's favorite Christmas gifts crushed. That only adds to my building emotion. What next?

When the closet is finally clean, I calmly call the kids down to complete some simple clean-up tasks. I find that Soren has put on plastic underwear (he's been wearing them over a diaper at night lately) inside out (plastic side to the skin) under his pull-up. Uhh...ok? Goodness. So, I tell him to take them off and put only his pull-up on. This is something he is quite capable of doing, so I go into the other room to do a bit of clean-up. Not even a minute later, Soren comes up to me and says "I peed." I say "what do you mean, you peed?" He says, "I'm sorry mommy." I say, "what do you mean you peed??" He goes in and points to his closet. Let me just tell you that his closet doesn't go to the floor...the bottom of it hits my thigh...so it's kind of high up. ANYway, I say "you peed in your pants? or you peed somewhere else?" He says "I'm sorry." and points to the inside of the closet. There is pee all over the inside of his closet, on some of his clothes, and some of his stuffed animals. I cracked. I was done.

I could not help myself. Soren was covered in pee because his plastic pants were inside out, yet there was a huge puddle in the closet. How on earth did this happen? I angrily send him upstairs to the tub. I'm already frustrated with Soren, as he has been peeing his pants several times a day, every day for the last month. I'm wanting to scream. Instead, I sob. I sob hard.

When I'm done with my little breakdown, I decide to write a blog about it (this blog). The kids are upstairs watching a movie. I'm almost finished when I hear them venture downstairs. I go into the bathroom to see what they are doing. Soren is naked, and Synnove has no pants on. Both of them have just gone to the bathroom and I notice that the training potty is smeared with poop and they are attempting to wipe Soren's bum. POOP! Back to the tub they both went. While in the tub I notice that Synnove's leg has a bunch of black marks all over it. I ask her if it's marker. She says "no." I try to wipe it off thinking it's dirt, or heaven forbid, poop! It doesn't wipe off, and I say..."what is this?" Synnove replies sheepishly..."marker." Lie #2 for the day. My kids are on a roll.

The day has only just begun. It's Winco or bust....busted car, busted head, busted bottoms!! I'm praying it's not "bust."

Occupied

I apologize to all of my faithful readers, as life has taken over. I hope to gather some sort of focused thought by Thanksgiving. Until then, I'll leave you with this...

Since my last post (10 days ago)...

• Potty training
• Wallpaper
• Play date
• Preschool
• Board meeting
• Bunco
• Working at the Wheelhouse
• Longview
• Putting some SERIOUS miles on the car
• Deliveries
• More bunco!
• More wallpaper
• Mary Kay
• Facials and parties
• Catching up with old friends
• Car problems
• 5+ nights at my parents'
• Hunting, hunting, HUNTING
• Shopping
• Birthday for Grandma
• Did I mention hunting?
• Oh, and more Mary Kay!
• There has not been ONE night since my last post that I have managed to get to bed before midnight.

Hooray for Saving $40 a Month!

I think that last week was one of the most stressful and horrendous weeks I've had in a long time. It seemed as if every aspect of my life was off kilter in some way, and the only thing constant was my kids. Every single day presented a new challenge, and the burden was starting to make my feet ache. I was neither sad or depressed, just tired and overwhelmed.

About halfway into my week we had some family staying over for a couple of days. During that time, my little Soren decided it was time he learn how to "potty in the potty chair!" I couldn't believe it. I wish I could accurately explain my state of mind last week so that you could fully comprehend what I was feeling the moment he said "mommy, I have to go potty!" Instead, I'll just tell you a bit about Soren's overall potty training experience...

I suppose it was early spring when Soren first expressed some interest in learning how to be a big boy (My "Sweet Guy" ). He hated a wet diaper, but didn't know how to actually go in the potty. I think he managed to do it one time. After that, the "I hate my wet diaper" phase fizzled. Life got busy with summer and I decided not to pursue training him. All of the advice I got from other mom's seemed to be..."he'll let you know when he's ready, so don't worry about it." So, I didn't.

Summer was in full swing and Soren started wetting through his diapers every night. It was so incredibly frustrating having to wash sheets every single day. I doubled up on diapers and that seemed to work about half the time. After a few weeks of that I was still fed up, so I began covering his diaper with Synnove's plastic training pants...they were pink. For some reason, they don't sell white plastic training pants anymore...the choice is either pink or blue. Soren didn't seem to mind, and the idea seemed to work. Eventually, I bought a couple more pairs and he has worn them every night since. And after our camping trip with the Thompson's, they were deemed "fancy pants." Ha ha =)

By late summer I was getting tired of buying diapers and decided I would do some training. I chose a day or two when we had nothing going on and confined him to the kitchen (the only non-carpeted section of the house). I know, it sounds kinda mean, but it wasn't all that bad. I made sure to provide him with lots of toys and left the TV off so that he wouldn't get sad for not being able to watch with Synnove. He really was a good boy and hardly complained. I gave him salty snacks and lots of juice and put his little potty in the kitchen with him. I tried very hard not to let my anger get the best of me after he peed on the floor for the 8th time...2 days in a row. I think he may have made it to the potty one time...maybe 2??

After that, I decided to just give up for a while. Obviously, he wasn't ready. I was disappointed because he was turning 3 in just a couple of months, and I felt he should be trained by that time. I didn't dwell on it though.


A couple of weeks before his 3rd birthday I thought I'd give it another go. This time, I made up a sticker chart for him and we tackled the same drill. Again, there was more pee on the floor than in the potty. However, by mid-day, he was starting to get it! He made it to the potty about half the time and I thought for sure we were going to have complete success by the end of the next day. He was successful enough for me to start putting pull-ups on him and allowing him to go to other areas of the house. Pull-ups are expensive (even the generic brands) and I didn't want to have to buy more, so I used them sparingly. Unfortunately, only a few minutes after I put on his first Pull-up, he peed his pants. 3 Pull-ups within a 1-2 hour period and I was done. He went back to the kitchen with training underwear.

After that, he wore Pull-ups over the span of a couple of days and had few successes, so I just switched him back to diapers and gave up. I knew that he was sincerely trying, but he just couldn't quite figure it out. Oh, and I forgot to mention, by this time he was completely "poop-trained." So, that was nice!

A month or so later it turned into last week. He announced he had to go potty and he's only had about 5 or 6 accidents since (not including night time and nap time)! He's even gone potty at Costco and the church nursery! He's been wearing a diaper for the last week, until today when I finally put some Pull-ups on him. He peed on the floor this morning while I was trying to get his diaper off for him to potty after he got up...but oh well. He's really really trying, and I'm soooo proud of him! His sticker chart should be full by the end of this week, then maybe we'll be able to put him in his fancy Thomas the Tank Engine undies!