Week Three

Early tomorrow morning, there will be no annoying sound of the alarm clock to wake my sleeping husband. For so long, I would wake up to the nasal sound of the cheap alarm clock, screaming to wake Josh up at the bright old time of 5:00 a.m. I, of course, would roll back over and fall back into my somewhat peaceful slumber until the kiddos wake me up. They are my tried and true alarm clock. I'm guaranteed to never oversleep. Now the tables have turned. Somehow, the world decided that Josh and I would switch schedules. I used to be the last to go to bed and the last to wake up. Now I am the first to go to bed and the first to wake up. Since time change, the kids now go to bed one hour earlier (yay! more evening for mama!) and they wake up one and a half hours earlier. Josh, being home 24/7, has not felt compelled to go to bed at his normal time nor wake up at his normal time. I can't blame him. It's almost like a little mandatory vacation. Only, there's no job to go back to, no vacation pay, and it can be a bit depressing from time to time. Okay, so maybe it's not anything like a vacation. I don't mind having him home, but as I told him the other day (which he agreed fully with), when you get married, you aren't meant to be together 24 hours a day. Eventually you want to scream at each other from lack of personal space. Luckily, I still have play dates with my friend Mandy to keep us out of the house one or two days a week. But now that we are going on the third week of no work, I'm not sure how much longer this can go on before one of us break from the stress of the unknown. My new question is, how long do you wait for the Union to find you a job before you throw three years of schooling and steady health insurance down the drain and give up on them? For the first time in a while, I think I may need to break out my Tums again. So begins our third week of unemployment.

A Date With Fiction

It's official. Two weeks from today I have a date with a vampire...and a werewolf...and a few other fictional characters. My friend Mandy and I have tickets for the Twilight: New Moon movie that is set to hit theaters in two weeks. She, being the mama of a new baby, will be leaving her two kiddos with her hubby and we will both set off together to see our obsession on the big screen. I am so freakin' pumped! I didn't get swept up in the Twilight saga until after the first movie came out, so I didn't get the pleasure of seeing that one in the theater. Mandy tried to get me to read it because she wanted to talk about it with me. I hesitated because I know my obsessive nature. I knew that my history of becoming obsessed with movie/tv/book series can be quite...um...crazy. I have a tendency to take my fandom to strange levels. I knew that I would more than likely become a crazed fan of the books and I wasn't entirely sure I needed yet another thing to fit into the already full geek section of my brain. But one snowy winter day, I borrowed the first book from her and gave it a go. I mean, what the heck, right? I swear I have more geek knowledge in my brain than useful information. Two weeks later I owned all four books and the movie. And two weeks from today, I'll be watching New Moon (without my kids of course). Did I mention I'm freakin' pumped? Okay, so I'll let you know how it goes and I'll be sure to tell you how it is the second time when I go with my mom (I sucked her into the Twilight insanity too). Woo-hoo! Two weeks!

Snake People

Yeah, I know. You are probably reading that title and going, "Snake people? What the...?" But trust me. It couldn't be an odder situation. To continue in the potty training saga of our lives, we have hit a...well...snag. Alex has been positively terrified to sit on the toilet and poop. Annoying as that is, I've tried many avenues thus far to no avail. Finally, I sat him down and tried to reason with him. Have you ever reasoned with a three-year old? Um, yeah...it doesn't work. I asked him why he as so afraid to poop on the potty and do you know what that little monkey told me? He said this: "I don't want to poop on the potty because of the snake people." Snake People?? I have no idea what could have possibly put such an idea in his head. At first, I thought it was just a random thing to say, but then he has repetitively asked me to flush away the snake people before he goes into the bathroom. He's even woke up once at night from a nightmare and said there were snake people in his bed. I have wracked my brain trying to find a place or show or anything that could have placed that sort of image in his head, and I've come up dry. And oddly enough, his diapers have been dry of poop for the past two and half days. He only wears a diaper to bed and to poop. And I was worried that the kid was convinced that snake people were going to attack him for pooping. But once again, I was surprised. Today...here to known as the greatest day ever...Alex fought his fear of the snake people and pooped on the potty! Woo hoo! He did it from his own free will with no alternative incentive egging him on. I'm a proud mama today, folks. I guess the snake people packed up and moved to the next potty training kids house. I hope they don't move back in when it's Abby's turn.

Just Thought I'd Share

The weather around here has been at it's finest. It's been staying in the mid 60's and that is perfect for outside playing. And naturally, with Autumn comes the falling of the multitude of leaves. It's a bummer to have to rake them or mow them all up, but it's marvelous when it comes to taking photos. I don't have trees with the gorgeous reds and brilliant orange leaves. I just have the annoyingly brown ones that make a big mess. But the kids have been having a blast playing in them. Alex suffers with a runny nose from every time he decides to dive bomb into the piles. But I figure if he's on medicine, he might as well enjoy himself, right? So mostly, I just thought I'd share some of the photos of our outside time in the leaves.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was a blast this year. Both Alex and Abby are at a perfect age to enjoy trick-or-treating. Granted, neither one of them can indulge in the chocolaty plunder from the evening, but they had fun, nonetheless. Alex even got to enjoy the evening with his good buddy Wesley, or as he calls him, his brother (I'll explain in another blog). Both the kids did great. Abby surprised me by not wanting help with her bucket the entire night. She outlasted her brother! Every time we would ask her if she wanted us to take her bucket, she would just say, "No!" But I think the best part of the evening was the great costumes we wore. Are you ready for it? Has the suspense got you on the edge of your seat wondering what amazingness awaits? Well get ready, folks. Because it's...

WIGGLE TIME!!

That's right! We went as the Wiggles! Okay...so we aren't exactly the most convincing as the Wiggles. But hey...I thought it was pretty darn fun. As you can see, the real Wiggles are much cooler.
But you gotta give me some credit here. The costumes cost less than real costumes and are reusable. They can wear them every single day if they wanted to (and believe me Alex has begged to wear the outfit every day).

Alex is Greg Wiggle (Yellow)...

Abby is Jeff Wiggle (Purple)...

Josh was Murray Wiggle (Red)...

and I went as Anthony Wiggle (Blue).

I feel bad for the blue wiggle. I did quite possibly the worst representation of him...ever. He's much nicer to look at in black pants than I am (wink, wink). But it was darn funny. I got a nice black wig so that I could look more like a man. Um...not a good wig, mind you, but it's better than long red hair, right? Anyways, here are the kids in their element.

But, I must say that the highlight of the night was my dad. My dad, for those of you that don't know, is quite the character. So, seeing as how I decorated the house for the occasion, I wanted to have someone hand out candy. So my dad eagerly volunteered for the position. He wanted to dress up, so he got in his hunting gear and this is what he looked like in the end...

Yup. That's my dad! It's called a ghillie suit. We called him the tree man. But I think he looks a bit like bigfoot. It cracked everyone up and he had a blast scaring the daylights out of the teenager trick-or-treaters. Hey, my theory is that if you are a teenager trick-or-treating then you got it comin'. It was awesome.

So we had a great night and I am sure it will only get more fun the older the kids get. So I hope you all had a fun time too. I know it's a couple days delayed, but Happy Halloween!

Pre-Halloween Fun

I love holidays and one of the ones that I have always loved is Halloween. Okay, okay. So it's not really a holiday. And if you ask Josh, then it's just a day that the candy companies got together and said, "Hey, let's make this day a holiday so we can get rich." But whatever. I love it. It's only been once or twice in my life that I haven't dressed up as something ridiculous. I've been everything from a sumo wrestler to a witch, to a headless dude who carried his head around on a platter (a personal best). Ahhh...memories. Of course, my days of freaky-scary costumes are being put on hold until the kiddos can handle a little scariness. But I love it, regardless. So you might ask, what am I going as this year? Oh...you shall see...(insert sly laughter here)...you shall see. Until then, I'll let you all see what our little household has been up to since then.

Every year I try to add one more thing to our decorations, but this year we are adding a disposable thing. It's three giant lawn spiders that you fill with leaves. The decor isn't complete yet. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve for the trick-or-treaters. And what with Josh's indefinite weekend, I'll be workin' on that tomorrow.

This is one of the spiders up close. Not bad for a buck-fifty, eh?

And that there on the chair is pumpkin man. I've had him for about three years, but this year might be his last. He's filled with newspaper and we had some pretty bad rain today sooo...he's probably gonna be a moldy pumpkin man after that.

Of course we have pumpkin carving to look forward to every year. And by 'we' I really mean just me. But the kids did try to do some of the gut removal. I'm proud to say that Abby was the most interested in this.

Wesley did pretty good too, but Alex wasn't really thrilled to get his hands dirty. Of all the things to be bothered by, he's not a fan of sticky hands. But he did try it at least once with a spoon. Of course you see the result of my efforts on the top picture of the blog. I wanted to do a scary one, but I did a friendly one for the kiddos.

And finally, we have the total accumulated construction paper collection. We ended up with quite a few things to decorate the kiddos' room. I must say that my education got a nice work out over the past couple of weeks (um, not). You can click on it to see it a bit larger if you want.

Overall it's been fun, but the real fun has yet to happen. Halloween is only two days away. I know it's a little sad, but I'm kinda pumped. Our family photo will be a gem. I'm making Josh dress up totally against his will. (evil laughter inserted here) Candy time, here we come!

50% Success

Potty training is going really well, I'm proud to say. As of today, Alex has been accident free and pee trained during the day. He's done great. He doesn't even ask for candy as his reward much at all anymore. Though, that might change shortly once the buckets of Halloween candy are sitting on a shelf with a large neon sign over it saying "YOU NEED CANDY". We are very proud of him. He doesn't have to be reminded to use the toilet at all when it come to peeing. So why am I calling this 50% success? One word. Poop. The kid won't poop on the potty for love nor money. Seriously. We've offered him praise and offered him rewards and he has only done it twice. Once for a really cheap $1.00 doctor's kit and once for three pieces of candy instead of two. But no other cheap dollar toys seem to amuse him enough to warrant a trip to the toilet. He is also not pee trained at night. He wakes up about 50% of the time dry. Of course, this isn't nearly enough to justify trying him with underwear at night. I figure that will come in it's own time. As for the pooping dilemma...if anyone out there has any fabulous suggestions, let me know. Leave comments. I'm all ears. I've tried mostly everything. Right now we are not letting him go to his 'safe' place to poop anymore (behind the couch). If he is going to wear a diaper we tell him he has to, at the very least, go in the bathroom. The next step, though I'm doubtful it will work, is to move him to the toilet with a diaper on. When I ask him why he won't go on the toilet, he says, "Because it's too hard, mom." Ugh...I'm hoping to move our success rate up to 80% soon. Until then, I'm just thrilled to decrease my diaper load by a good chunk.