"look what I made!"

With our little girl planned to make an appearance this fall, I've decided to start my serious attempts at potty training. I have absolutely no desire to diaper two children at the same time and have decided I will do as much as I possibly can to avoid it. I've been setting Boden on the potty here and there since he was about 6 months old, just to get him used to it. I know some kids can be afraid of the potty, so this was my attempt to avoid that. And also because our spunky pediatrician told me if I started when he was 6 months old I could have him trained by the time he was 1. (I guess she should have been more specific to mention I needed to be consistent about it. Once every couple days doesn't really do it, if you're wondering.)

So a few days ago I decided to just take off the diaper and suggest he go on the potty, alot. He much prefers the little bjorn potty, I think because he can get on and off it himself and he can move it to another room rather than just sitting in the boring old bathroom.


He was really excited about this at first. He would go and then he would stand up and exclaim "Look what I made!" and we would all cheer and say "Yay Boden!" That was apparently exciting enough to him that he found a way to go pee approximately 11 times in the first 20 minutes. I was thinking, "wow, he's really catching on to this...this isn't going to be so hard after all....well, unless he really has to go that often." And then he tells me "I need to go poo poo" and he sits down on the potty, goes pee, then stands up and poops on the floor. Seriously?

Poop on the floor wasn't so exciting to me. I decided I didn't really want to do that again so we headed out for some "big boy undies". We found some with Cars and some with Thomas the Train. I saw some that were little boxer briefs for toddlers which I thought was just adorable, but they were only solid colors - not nearly as exciting to a 2 year old as Thomas the Train. Isn't that the most adorable little underwear model you've ever seen?

He actually does really good when in underwear and has only had a few messes. In fact, we even had a successfully dry trip to the bookstore the other day with no diaper. He definitely knows the difference though - if he's in a diaper or a pull up he doesn't really even bother to tell me he's going. I'm not expecting him to be trained by next week, but I think we've got a good start (at least I hope so!)

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on another note of how grown up my little guy is becoming, he's taking his first nap in his big boy toddler bed right now. I really want to go take a photo, but the shutter is too loud and I don't want to wake him (this is one of only 2 naps he's taken in the past week so I'm not chancing it). We aren't really planning to move him out of the crib until we move next month, but he was refusing to nap, so I laid down on the toddler bed with him and he fell right to sleep.

random moments in our life

Lately we've been keeping pretty busy. We've been house-hunting in O'Fallon for the past couple weeks. House-hunting is not really one of my favorite things to do, it's time consuming and stressful, and disappointing when you find out a house you like has just been sold, but it sure is exciting when you finally find a house that will be perfect for you - like we did just a few days ago! more on that in a later post... Michael has been very busy working on his sermons for the Ephesians series our church is doing this summer. This is the first time he's done a series, so it's been a good challenge for him and he's really enjoying it. I didn't get to hear him last week since I was doing the preschool lesson, but many people told me it was great. Hopefully we'll start getting them recorded soon and posting them online so those of you who live out of town and want to listen can.

Boden is acting more and more like a little boy all the time - his imagination is starting to show up and he is cracking me up all the time. We were driving to a friends house this week to go swimming and he had his little diving rings and he was pretending one of them was a steering wheel - he was turning it around and around and saying "look mama, I'm driving!" Very proud of himself too.

The other night he insisted on wearing his hat to bed...and when I went in to get him in the morning he was standing there in his crib with his hat still on! I had totally forgotten about it, so I had to chuckle when I picked him up.


He also had his first popsicle of the summer. (I know, I know - who gives their 2 yr old a popsicle while wearing a white shirt, right?) He actually did pretty good at not getting any on himself, but it was hot outside and melting fast so I finished it off for him :)
He's also become quite the climber. I walked into the dining room the other day to find he had fixed himself a little "snack" and pulled up a chair to read my bible. We have a counter height table, so I was surprised to see him get all the way up on the chair by himself.

Then, one day last week he put on daddy's flip flops, shuffled towards the door, and announced that he needed car keys and that he was going to church. LOL. "See you wayter mama!"

Being the mom of a 2 yr old can be a struggle sometimes, but there is so much joy in it too. I feel very blessed.

Exciting News!

We had our 20 week ultrasound today! It was very exciting - so much fun to see the baby moving around. The ultrasound tech took a long time looking at things and measuring every bone and organ so we got to see the baby for nearly an hour! It's amazing what you can see on those things.

We've debated back and forth whether or not to find out if the baby is a girl or boy. We didn't find out with Boden and it was a lot of fun, but this time Michael wanted to know, and I kind of did too. Sooo.....drumroll.......it's a GIRL! We actually had to wait about 30 min into the ultrasound before finding out because she was positioned funny and moving around a ton.

It was fun to see her stretch out her legs and at one point she looked like she was scratching her head and another time sucking her thumb. It's funny now to be able to say "she" when talking about the baby. I never was able to do that with Boden, so it's totally different.

Here's a few of the good photos from the ultrasound:

We are so excited and so thankful that everything looks just perfect. She's measuring right on target for our Nov. 3 due date and looking healthy in every way - Praise God!

Vacation!

We just got back yesterday from a weeklong vacation in Virginia Beach with my side of the family. (well, most of us were on vacation...Michael had class during the day, but was able to join in the fun for the afternoon & evening). We rented a great house in Sandbridge with a pool and lots of other fun things to do and it was just a few houses from the beach. We had fantastic weather too! I have tons of photos to go through but here are a few for now:

playing some golf on the putting green

Swimming with Poppa. He loved going "fwimming" - he has no fear of the water apparently

Running into the ocean. Boden had absolutely no fear of the water at all. It was hard work taking him to the beach because you had to stay within 2 ft of him at all times because he would just dart out into the ocean. He got overtaken by waves a few times and scared us, but it didn't stop him one bit!

And of course - no family vacation to the beach is complete without the "khaki and white family photo". It was interesting to try to get a group photo that included a 2 yr old while using a self timer. He's not real big on standing still for 10 seconds to wait for the photo.

Running on the beach with Daddy. The family photo shoot resulted in Boden getting completely soaked in the ocean.
I will have more photos to post later - but now it's time for a nap :)