How to Potty Train Your Son in a Day

Greg has been showing a lot of interest in using the potty lately which made me think he's ready to give it a go. We decided to hold off until we got back from Mississippi and then see if he was still interested. Well he came back as excited as ever so I thought Great! lets go for it! Here's my simple plan to potty train your child in a day

Day 1

1. Take him to the store and pick out really cool underwear. Very exciting!

2. Take them home and try them all on. Make sure you pick him up in front of a mirror in each pair so he can see how great his bum looks with Thomas the Train or Lightening McQueen on it. Assume that his shrieking like an excited girl at a Jonas Brothers concert means he just can't wait to use the potty.

3. Take him potty, cheer wildly for tiny trickle. Repeat over and over for an hour.

4. Fold up a towel on his seat in the stroller and tell him its just in case his pee comes out while we're on a walk. Remind him, your pee goes in the potty. When I got home Greg jumped out excitedly and yelled "mama I peed on the washclof!", beaming. Umm I think he doesn't get it.

5. Change his clothes, take him potty, cheer, rewards.

6. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

7. Suggest after outfit after outfit that maybe he should take a nap with his diaper. Greg refuses and I cave. To my surprise he wakes up dry. Ten minutes later he comes out with noticabely wet underwear which he swears are dry. When I question him he finally says "Yeah I peed the floor in my woom" then runs off leaving his underwear behind.

8. By this point I figured what the heck I'll let him run naked for a while, he's just peeing all over anyways.

9. Now we really had to go somewhere so I tackled him down to dress him. Imagine my joy to find some tell tale smears on his naked bum. Our conversation went something like this

"Um Greggers did you poop?"

"Yeah" very non-chalantly

"Where"

"Over dere"

"Where over there"

"On the floor"

"Where on the floor"

"Umm under the table I tink"

Twenty minutes of hands and knees searching revealed nothing. Hopefully that means he was just saying stuff and those smears meant he stopped in his tracks, but I'm a little afraid of a surprise later.

10. At this point in the day, when he ran from me holding his underwear yelling he wanted a diaper, I gladly gave him one. Which he wore the rest of the day.



Day 2

1. Get child up put on clean diaper.



In the end Dave and I came to the conclusion that maybe the underwear are just some new item of character clothing to wear and peeing in the potty is something fun to do sometimes. I'm pretty sure in his head those underwear were just like a diaper waiting to be used then replaced.

Little Cherubs

The other day Greg and Hailey asked if I would get down this huge box of train tracks for them to play with. I said sure, as soon as the boys room is picked up so you can set the train up in there. They were back in record time with the room reportedly clean as can be. As I walked down the hall, they ran ahead of me and lined up next to each other in front of Greg's bed beaming like the Von Trapp children with their shiny, little, blond heads. Thinking to myself "how sweet. They're so proud of their cleaning job," I start to get down the train set all the while telling them what a great job they did. Then out of the corner of my eye I see the real reason for their cherubic smiles and strategic line up. They've piled every single toy from the floor (and there was a lot) on Greg's bed and tried to block the giant pile with their bodies. No wonder it got done so quickly. Gotta give them points for trying I guess. I helped them clean it up right, and got them the trains. Meanwhile I learned that if your children come to you smiling like the Chesire cat, there's probably a reason and it's not always good.

The Dorky Kid on the Playground

Tonight while she was getting ready for bed, McKenzie started telling me her sad tale about life on the playground. She's never been one to have a ton of friends. She usually has one or two that she just really loves. But she had a few little friends last year and one on again, off againer that seemed to really matter to her. Apparantly there's all sorts of sadness and difficulty happening as a result of some sort of jumproping club and mean girls. Most of you have witnessed my embarrassing lack of coordination, which sadly Kenzie has inherited. This does not make one popular in the jumproping club apparantly. Basically its a long, tragic tale and at the heart of it is this poor little girl who doesn't really have a lot of friends and is terribly shy and self aware and I think maybe getting picked on a little. In short she's me. McKenzie's story is the story of my entire childhood. I was the sad, dork at school with one friend only. And if that friend was gone one day or played with someone else, well my day was wrecked. I didn't really move much past this one friend scenario until 10th grade. I tried to reassure her that mommy only had one friend total until 5th grade. Surprisingly this did not help. I thought maybe she'd snort and make a face like "Geez mom even I have more friends than that," but all she said was "who Nikki?" I tried to give her advice, but I feel wildly underqualified. Making new friends has never been my best skill. I went the "well you have to deal with mean people your whole life and this is a great learning experience" route"but that fell short too. Hailey, who I was so worried about sitting all alone on the bus, apparantly jumps on and has a slew of friends to sit with. She doesn't want to sit by her sister, I thought it would be the other way around. My heart aches for McKenzie. I know her pain but I don't know what to do. I want to go down to that school and say: "Hey you bratty little girls. She'll get better at jumprope if you just let her try. McKenzie is sweet and smart and loyal and way cuter than all of you so you just better be her friend or you're missing out." (Pretty sure that wouldn't go over too well.) I know she has to fight her own battles but man it sucks being the dorky kid at school.

Ode to Baconsalt

Just having finished another great meal seasoned with our new favorite condiment, I want to share our great discovery with you all. Bacon flavored salt! I know you are thinking wow what a genius invention why didn't anyone think of this before, because that is exactly what we thought! It seems like such a no brainer. Duh of course. Apparantly its in huge demand with the troops and the company ships a case a month to different units. We found out about it in a newspaper article and are now making it our personal mission to test exactly how many foods we can improve by making them taste like bacon. So far we like it on eggs, potatoes, sandwiches, rice, pasta, and of course all meat. Dave has a friend that's a chef and likes to apply a thick coating to steak before grilling. The guy swears by it. That's our next experiment. Since I know some of you out there share my feeling that anything with bacon is probably a hit, I'm spreading the joy. We find it at Trading Company around here, try http://www.baconsalt.com

10 years and a herd of kids later....

Friday we celebrated our 10th anniversary! I have to say if you want to feel your age get all dressed up, act surprised your nice dress is too tight (I swear its not the icecream), ditch your 4 kids with a sitter (thanks Carrie and Scott), then jump into your sporty minivan for an exciting night out. You can only be gone as long as the baby can stretch. Extra points if your van's mysterious transmission and electrical problems act up. Be sure to get home early so you can go to bed for work the next day. Ahh adulthood.
Its been a great 10 years. I'm blessed to have such a wonderful husband. He may be the shyest guy on the planet but that works since I talk too much. I knew I'd marry him right after I met him. An experience on our second date that showed me what a great dad he'd be clinched it. I'm so glad I have him in my life. I can't wait for 10 more years (and no more kids, cross your fingers everyone)

The Dance of Joy

Hooray for me and mom's everywhere! The kids are back in school. I would like to say that I love public school. They come and cart the kids away first thing in the morning and bring them back in the afternoon, educated and fed. What more could I ask for? Granted their school isn't the best and not very challenging so I do try and do a little extra at home, but its not the ghetto and their safe and sound so away they go! Hailey didn't get into afternoon kindergarten (sigh) but she's gone all afternoon while the boys nap. Which means I actually have time to complete a thought and a page of a book. Something I haven't done in months. When my kids are home their is no such thing as alone with your thoughts. Here's some pictures of the kids fun summer. Sorry they are in totally random order. Ah, Hailey the fashion model.

Connor is sitting up and getting ready to crawl. I don't think I'm too excited about that since getting the kids to pick up all of their tiny crap is virtually impossible. There are Barbie shoes and beads hiding all over just waiting for him to put in his mouth. No amount of threatening and yelling seems to matter. I took all the Barbie accessories away months ago yet I still keep finding holdouts everywhere. I tell you those things multiply on their own.

McKenzie's first day of 2nd grade

Hailey's second day of kindergarten. Dave took her to school the first day and in his rush forgot the all important first day picture. Hailey says kindergarten is super hard because you have to sit still.

At the park withEli. Picking up on the ladies I see. We went to Shadle park with Sharon and her kids a week or two ago. The kids had a great time. The girls and Eric playing went something like this "Eric you're the handsome prince and I'm the princess." "No, I'm a warrior and this is our battleship." "NO Eric you're not. YOU'RE THE PRINCE"

He pretended to hate it but I think deep down he didn't mind too much. Greggers was so thrilled to see Eli. He misses his friends so much.

This is a huge playground in Washington Park in Portland. We flew down for the day last week to explore and go to this ballet thing, interesting only to me and McKenzie. Washington Park is huge and has a ton to see. I wish we had more time to explore. Portland has a lot of much cooler stuff than I realized.

The girls at the top of the International Rose Garden in Washington Park overlooking the city.

I took the kids to Kids's Day at Riverfront Park a few weekends ago. They have all of this free stuff you can do set up all over the park. Area businesses have booths set up with free activities and fun stuff for the kids to do like crafts and face painting. Hailey won an Elmo backpack full of Sesame Street toys and felt really special. Afterwards I took the kids to play in the huge fountain in the front of the park. (Yes kids are supposed to play in it) The above picture is the girls snuggled up together in the one towel I brought (saves on laundry if they all share). Funny story about that fountain. Tons of kids run through this huge like 30 feet tall structure. some of them bring swimsuits, some just wear their clothes and deal with the dampness. Well I look over and see some stark naked kid a little older than Greg running around like "Hey look at me" At first I thought he was an escapy but then I saw his sisters also apparantly naked. Upon closer inspection I realized that they were just running around in sopping wet underwear that made it look like they were naked. These girls were older than mine, the oldest was like 9 or 10. I was like alrighty then. Now I had to scope out the parents, surely they were hippies or Europeans (its kind of like how you can always pick the Europeans out at Sandpoint beach because no other self respecting man would wear a speedo to the lake). Nope normal parents, like someone I would be friends with. I had to call someone, alas I only got voicemails so I just left NIk a laughing voicemail about naked families. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or be appalled. For anyone out there thinking "what's the big deal? I let my 9 year old run mostly naked in public all the time." Let me give you a pointer. Put clothes on the kid. It just looks bad. Judgemental people like me think you are a weirdo. And Spokane has a lot of ummm questionable people if you know what I mean.

The kids with their faces painted (you can't really see it but they were pretty proud)

Another randomly placed picture of the Batson kids and mine (minus Eli) at Shadle Park.

We had a great summer. We lived like teenagers. Went to bed super late and slept in (kids too) and were always running around. Hence the lack of blog posts. Fun though it was I was definately ready for school to start. The girls were making me crazy. Dave took the girls to Salt Lake to visit Grandma Huisman a couple of days before school started and they had a great time. Kenzie cried when she had to leave. She doesn't get to see her other Grandma too much. One night while they were gone Greggers and I were in this tiny Greek place grabbing dinner. I was holding him when he said "Mama, let me check your nose." So he shoves his little fingers up there. I thought he meant check with his eyes. I said Gross Greggers and set him down. Tilting his head back he told me to check his now. I stooped down, took a quick peak and assured him it was all clear. He yelled "No with you fingers!" The old Greek guy watching had a good laugh. I'm pretty sure he used extra bleach on our table when we left.

Olympic Fever

As I write this my kids have just barely gone to bed, having stayed up to catch every second of the closing ceremony. My kids have become completely obsessed with the Olympics. Possibly fueled by my obsession with Michael Phelps, but no one can prove it.
Here are ten signs your children may have an unhealthy obsession with the Olympics
1. they cheer wildly whenever Michael Phelps, or anyone else they think may be him is on tv
2. when they accidentally fall off of something, they jump up, yell hooray and throw their arms in the air like a gymnast
3. their favorite commercial of the Olympics is the one where the sumo wrestlers run down the street forming an airplane that takes off. Whenever this comes on they cheer wildly and start laughing their heads off about "the underwear commercial."
4. they dance around the living room, half dressed, singing along with Chinese pop stars like crazed apes
5. after marathon late-night viewing sessions, they recreate the previous days events using furniture and household items as props. (I only lost one laundry basket to the "gymnastics course")
6. walk around singing the Olympics theme song, it has currently replaced singing of Dragontales and Sesame Street songs
7. tell you all of their dreams are about them being in the Olympics
8. the second the tv flips on they ask for the Olympics channel, not the Hannah Montana channel
9. won't do anything unless you yell on your mark, get set, go! first
10. ask you worredly what they're going to do now that the Olympics are over

For those of you who caught the closing ceremonies, did anyone else think the "memory tower" reminded them of the movie Ants? With all of those guys climbing up and moving together? My kids picked this up right away. This tower was hysterical from start to finish. When they white painted guys started dancing Greggers started yelling "naked dancing" and fell over laughing. Those crazy silver/red suited tower guys had the girls in tears. Then started the Chinese pop stars, that my children tried their hardest to sing right along with in uh, Chinese I think. I'm pretty sure my new downstairs neighbors are really regretting their decision to move in yesterday. Lucky for them its over.