8.22.08

No one ever suspects that you are going to have your first baby early so when I started having contractions on the way to a party on August 21, 2004 - I definitely wasn't taken very seriously! AT 37 weeks pregnant with our first child, we were on the way to my step brother's 40th birthday party (which makes him 44 today!) I started feeling this strange feeling in the car and thought instantly "is that a contraction?" After a few hours of these "feelings" coming every 20 - 25 minutes, I grabbed my husband watch to put on. I wanted to start timing these things to see if they were regular at all. I think that's MAYBE when he started thinking I was serious (but still so early, right?) Well, after the party, they kept coming all night - so much so that I couldn't sleep....walking around...pacing the house. Around 11 the next morning - they were 5 minutes apart and had been for a complete hour so I called my doctor who asked how far we lived and then said "let's give it another hour!" He didn't take me seriously at all! That might've had something to do with the fact of my complaining in his office days before! So by the next hour, I had to lean on the wall through each contraction so we were headed to the hospital! We had no idea what the sex of this first born was going to be and we were nervous, anxious, excited, even a little scared! "SHIM'S A HIM" as our doctor declared when he was born on 8.22.04 weighing in at 6 lbs. 4 ozs.

I laid in bed with this first born (our "numero uno") this past Thursday night before his big day and I thought to myself "I'm laying here with my oldest and my youngest" - who was kicking up a storm in my belly at the time and it just felt so surreal. That this precious 4 year old is mine and all the things he's added to our lives in these few short years!!! He is the stereotypical first born - a born leader, confident, pleaser, thoughtful, protecting and so kind natured.

He had his 4th birthday party at the fire station with all of his little friends and they had a blast!! But I think I definitely lost the Mom of the Year Award when I took him to the doctor ON his actual birthday to get 5, YES FIVE, shots! I know....bad decision! But to my defense insurance wouldn't pay for his shots or well visit before he turned 4 and he had to have his health form to start school. I know....still a bad decision! It was horrible!

But now I have a big 4 year old! Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday we were making that drive down to Piedmont Hospital for the first time.

August 2004

August 2005

August 2006

August 2007

August 2008

He's house trained!

So I think we've actually house trained our puppy! He's completely got the number #1 down and only goes outside to poop! I know you are probably thinking "how great is that? I didn't even know they got a puppy" well that's the problem - we don't have a puppy!!! We have a two year old that literally only wants to poop outside!!! At first, I was like whatever as long as it's not in my house or in your pants! But NOW...he will open the back door and head out to the back yard to do his duty....that's a problem! He can't function in society like that! So because I feel he completely knows what he's doing (if you can open the door on your own and go find your spot to poop - don't you agree he knows what he's doing?) I now am faced with the challenge of breaking him from pooping in the yard....any suggestions on how to do this?

I should've known.....

It's been awhile since I've been to Chuck E Cheese and I remember it being a total nightmare but that was before I had kids years ago. So when we set out for a birthday party there this morning, I was hopeful that this could be fun! I've changed alot in the past few years and besides, I'm a mother now, right? This will be great and the kids will love it!

I don't want to say I started out the morning in a bad mood but I just couldn't quite shake the cobwebs. I had a cup of coffee at home but still felt the need to pull it through Dunkin Donuts to get another small - just couldn't wake up! As I went through the drive through, I asked the boys if they wanted anything and all they said was some water. So they gave me some water and it had a funky lid on it with no straw...whatever...so I hand it back to numero uno telling him "be very careful not to spill it". Well little man is crying he's thirsty so I told numero uno to share it with him - he goes to hand it to him and literally dumps the entire thing in his lap!!! So outfit number 1 of the two that I brough with me due to potty training is now soaked! It was totally my fault for thinking he should be able to drink out of a big cup without spilling it - I keep wondering when I'm going to remember this!!

So we pull in the parking lot of Chuck E Cheese and I change little man's shorts & undies and I keep telling him "let mommy know if you need to go potty, okay?" Luckily I had ANOTHER pair of undies and shorts in my bag so I had two extra outfits (one I just changed him into which left only 1 extra set for accidents).

They love Chuck E Cheese - They don't even care if they have tokens to play the games! They just love ACTING like they are playing the games. I'm so excited to see my friends from preschool that i really haven't seen all summer so I'm chatting it up with them, keeping an eye out for both kids running around. I was even laughing telling them about potty training and that little man is probably going to poop his pants here! Well sure enough, that is exactly what he did!!! Let me just say that cleaning out poop from my 2 year old's pants in the Chuck E Cheese bathroom brought me to an all time low for the day.

You can only imagine the mood I'm now in and there is this girl there that I know from preschool and I've always said I can't figure her out! She really is socially retarded!!! So a few times I would be walking towards her about to say hey and she would turn her head like she didn't want to talk to me so I was thinking whatever!! I'm not going out of my way to talk to her - I don't have time for pettiness...stupid but after the whole bathroom incident I come back and I'm literally sweating from cleaning him up! And I'm in an aisle that she has to address me to get by so please let me tell you what she says to me...."You haven't popped that baby out yet?" to which I reply "um....no - December! I got a ways to go!" Then she says "oh gosh!!!" REALLY? PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM ME!!! I'm thinking how much I liked it better when she just wasn't even talking to me! I know people say inappropriate and stupid things to pregnant people (Are you having twins? You don't have much longer, huh?, etc.) but when you've been pregnant twice yourself, you should know the things you didn't like to hear when you yourself were pregnant and there is no excuse for you saying those things to another pregnant person unless you are just TRYING to make them feel worse about themselves than they already do!!! RIGHT?

Another reason I wasn't anxious to hang out at Chuck E Cheese any longer than I had to...Plus I felt like I couldn't wash my hands enough like I'm some obsessive compulsive whose hands are so dry from washing them that they are about to start bleeding! I couldn't get out of there fast enough - I just wanted to get in my car, have my kids buckled in for a few minutes of stillness on the car ride home. Well, this girl works at the door and stamps your hand when you come in and I guess checks it when you leave.....I don't really understand the system (did we all have the same stamp to know we belong together?) but she took her job so seriously! Any mother of toddlers (especially two year old ones!) know what it's like when you are ready to leave....YOU ARE READY TO LEAVE!!! I'm holding little man like a surf board while he's kicking and screaming and she is taking her sweet time blocking us from the door while she does her CSI routine of checking our stamps....seriously? Do you think someone would be stealing these kicking screaming children???

Let's just say I got home, numero uno spilt yet another huge drink on my laptop (you don't even want to hear how well I didn't do with that one!), little man pooped on the deck (WHY can't he poop in the potty?) and I couldn't get them down for naps fast enough.

As Numero Uno was going to sleep he asks me "mom, when we wake up from our naps can we go back to Chuck E Cheese?" He means today....I don't even know how I responded but all I'm thinking is if I NEVER go back to Chuck E Cheese again...it will be too soon.

It's a..........

HEALTHY BABY!!!!!

Sorry to disappoint but we're keeping this one a surprise as well! I was definitely more tempted to find out with this one than with the other two and if we (collectively) had been on the fence at all, I would've found out. As hard as it is while we are in that ultrasound room, it's all worth it to not find out at the time of delivery (for us). There is a different excitement in the air in the delivery room when the baby is unknown - the nurses all start chalking up their guesses on the board in our room, even our doctor loved to announce that "Shim is a HIM" when he delivered our firstborn. Since the ultrasound technician doesn't even write it in our chart, he doesn't know the sex either! And there is nothing like the sound of 40+ family members and friends screaming with excitement at the top of their lungs when daddy goes out to announce "we have A......." I've been amazed both times that I can hear them down two corridors.

I always get nervous driving to each of my children's ultrasounds and today was no different. I just can't get over how much of a miracle it is as the ultrasound tech is going over the parts of the brain and the blood flow to the brain, the four chambers of the heart, showing us how the stomach and bladder both have fluid in them so they are working correctly, the femur bone, the fingers and toes and of course, the precious beating heart. I'm in awe and am overwhelmed with how big God is at this moment.

Do you think it looks like a girl or a boy? Love to hear people's predictions!!! When I was leaving the house today - I told numero uno that I'd bring him some pictures of the baby and he asked me "mommy, what is it going to look like?" I replied "i don't know exactly but it will be much bigger than the last picture - you'll get to see it's eyes, nose and little lips...." and he says "will it have boobies?"

20 more weeks and we'll find out!!!!

The countdown is on!!!

20 Weeks!!!

So I can't say there was a "chill" in the air this morning but it definitely felt good enough for me to want to spend the day outside. So that is saying alot considering I haven't even wanted to step outside for several weeks (even though I'm forced to with my little ones!) So we went out early this morning and sat on our front step while our boys ran around the front yard (and little man pooped in the flower bed but that's a different story!)

But as I sat there so thankful for the "cooler" weather I started thinking of all that is to come in the next months so here are the countdowns going on in my head:

13 days until my oldest child turns 4

16 days until the kids start back to school

20 weeks to go!

42 days until I turn 33!

46 days until I hit the beach with JUST the girls!! (Not soon enough!)

140 days (or less) until our third child is born

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" ecclesiastes 3:1

Oh how we forget.....

Why is it that we look back on some events in our life and remember them as being easy or not as hard as we remember? I think God has a way of erasing some bad moments from our lives so we'll be able to go through it again. For example, the aches and sickness of pregnancy, the pain of childbirth and the mental torture of potty training!

For me, I remember numero uno being fairly easy to train - a chart, a few stickers, a toy on the fridge and he pretty much had it down within the first week (or so I remember it that way!) But little man (child #2) is totally opposite from numero uno so why did I expect things to go the same way?

I decided last week during his two year appointment (with advice from the doctor) that he was ready when he looks at me and says "poopie, mommy". I told the dr. "see this is what he does, he usually tells me before he needs to go" to which the dr. replies "oh, he's ready then!" I left the office thinking "but am I ready?"

The next morning after he pooped in his diaper, he went off and brought me back a clean diaper to change him with. I thought this is it - the last straw when you are bringing me a clean diaper!!! Plus I thought it's definitely so much easier to train him while being pregnant than it is with a newborn - I've been down that road before - not fun!

So some of you know I have a new hero...his name is John Rosemond and he's pretty much the only professional I'll take parenting advice from these days! So I googled what he thought about potty training which helped me make up my mind to start this mentally challenging journey. He basically says that teaching a child to potty train is no different than teaching a child to feed himself with a spoon. "Both are self-help skills, both are taught with gentle guidance, both involve the child making messes during the early learning phase, and both can and should be accomplished before a child is 2. Moreover, one does not have to "push" a child younger than 2 to learn to feed himself any more than one must "push" the same age child to learn to use the toilet properly."

Is that not so backwards from all the crap we are now being taught from our pediatricians and even our peers? Rosemond points out that in the 1950's (his generation) it was ABNORMAL for a child NOT to be potty trained by age 2 and now it's the total NORM for kids ages 3 even 3 1/2 to NOT be potty trained. He then poses this question: Is it easier to train a 6 month old puppy or a 1 year old dog? In fact, if one waits until a dog is a year old to begin training, the dog may not "get it" for quite some time. On the other hand, it takes a matter of several days to a week to successfully house train a puppy of three to six months of age, after which one need hardly be concerned with accidents.

Rosemond goes on to say "Ah, but the critical variable is not familiarity or understanding; rather, it is habit, and the longer one allows the dog/human to eliminate at will, without regard for circumstances, the harder it is going to be to teach the dog/human the "new trick."And yet the majority of pediatricians, following Dr. T. Berry Brazelton’s lead, tell parents that while it is remotely possible to train a child younger than 2, such training, because that age child is not generally "ready," will require "force." This is hogwash. The truth is that as a child ages beyond 24 months, and the habit of releasing at will strengthens, the more "force" will be required to break the habit, and the more "traumatic" the process will be for both parent and child."

So with Rosemond's advice I set out on the potty training journey knowing I have 4 months to complete it before baby#3 gets here. Don't ask me how it's going yet because I'll respond with "not super great" BUT I've started it with the mindset of there will messes, it's minor, no big deal and I know he'll eventually have to get it, right? After all everyone is potty trained at some point or another!!!! Even my stubborn stubborn STUBBORN little man!

P.S. This is my new favorite song right now!!!!!