Mommy, WOW! I'm a big kid now.

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!!  I'm home with Otter today since his daycare is closed.  It's nice.  I love being home with him. Which got me thinking back to this summer when I was home for three months looking for a job. I was miserable.  A combination of feeling unworthy of any job and feeling like I wasn't contributing to the family as I should make it a really, really long three months. I am able to work, so why wouldn't I work?- That is rhetorical, I don't really need or want to hear why I should be staying home. But, now, there are days where I just want to be home and I love being home when I get the chance.  I wish I could find a perfect medium.  Maybe where I could work from home 2-3 days a week and at the office the other days.  It's the going to work that makes me realize that I love both and would like a better balance.  I'm not sure if I'll ever find a job that will let me do both.  Definitely not during Otter's toddler days.  However, he is learning so much at daycare and the socialization is doing really well. 

Speaking of learning things, Otter is pretty much potty trained.  Except number two...if you know what I mean. It all started when he saw some other kids at daycare using the potty and being able to join the potty parade. Then, I picked him up one day and he was covered in stickers for each time he used the potty.  He was still wearing diapers at that time. After a few days of that and having no luck getting him to use the potty at home, his teacher and I decided to start sending him in underwear.  He had a few days of accidents and then all of the sudden no accidents all.  But he was still having troubles at home.  Mainly because we'd get home in the evenings and I'd start cooking dinner and he'd start chugging milk/water and playing and doing his chores.  We'd all get side-tracked because this was new to us all.  But after a few days he stopped having accidents in the evening.  So, he only wears diapers to bed at night and for naps.  We are still working on "poopies".  But I am dang proud.  It wasn't and painful or drawn out as I had fears.  Seriously, I was dreading it and putting it off.  But, it is, yet, another reminder that my little guy isn't so "little" anymore.

For anyone who is about to undertake the potty training adventure, I found that stickers are a greats (and cheap) motivator/reward. Also, for the days that we are completely accident free, he is able to pick a reward out of the reward basket.  It is filled with goodies from the Dollar Spot from Target!  Take your little guy or gal to the potty every 20-30 minutes whether they thing they have to go or not. We use the potty seats that fit right onto the actual toilet. A step-stool is good for those "I can do it!" kiddos. And not to mention, the though of cleaning a portable potty seat makes me want to puke.  Isn't that why I am transitioning away from diapers?

Do you have successful potty training tips you'd like to share? Questions or difficulties? Share them!

FOMO

It's really nice to have a weekend of doing nothing. Really, really nice. We celebrated Doc's birthday but other than that we had no obligations or commitments. Otter and I ran some errands on Saturday and then we came home and took down all of the Christmas decorations. I even decided I wanted to watch a movie that I have wanted to watch. So, I rented Trouble with the Curve. I enjoyed it. Mainly because I was in my pajamas in my own bed with Otter surrounded by air popped popcorn, banana chips, gold fish, pistachios, and diet coke. But, in all seriousness, it was yet another feel good movie. I love Amy Adams and won't turn down Justin Timberlake, either.

On Sunday, Doc headed into work for a little bit and Otter and I just hung out at home. We watched a few too many movies and built our first snow man that Otter named "Me". As twilight approached, Otter started to become concerned about "Me" asking if he was okay and if he would go to sleep. What a sweet boy.

Although I love spending time with my boy, I can't leave the room with out him freaking out. It doesn't always seem like he is screaming for me, but rather because he is being "left out". This kid is definitely my kid. Like me, he seems to have a mild case of FOMO (fear of missing out). I have never been a particularly popular person, especially in high school, but I always need to know what is going on. Not because I am necessarily nosey but because I don't want to miss out on something. My mom and step-dad even affectionately called me "Radar" for a while. I just want to be included in everything. Perhaps this is because I wasn't popular or maybe it is because I had two older step-sisters who were close to me in age but old enough to do things I couldn't, at the same time. It doesn't matter why, but I have this personality trait that makes me want to know and be involved. As I have gotten older I have learned to manage this feeling but I am not always successful. I really hope Otter doesn't grow up feeling this way. Hopefully some of his father's characteristics rub off ans his is the perfect mix of social and antisocial.  I make sure that when it is appropriate to include him he is included.  I also explain to him when he's not included why and what he can do instead. For example when the neighbors are outside playing with their guests, Otter wants to go over.  I explain that they are playing with their friends right now and that he hasn't been asked to come over.  He's not allowed to invite himself, but instead, we can go do ______ together. I hope it works. With all of the technology we currently have and the technology his generation will likely have they will be connected all of the time and the FOMO will only intesify. We don't need a million Scott Disicks running around.

It's Twenty Thirteen!

Well, I took a little hiatus.  I was working on something and then the Sandy Hook tragedy happened and what I was working on felt meaningless. Then, I decided I would write my thoughts and feelings on that.  But I couldn’t.  It hurt too damn bad to acknowledge that someone could be that cold. Instead, I hand wrote a letter to my son. Maybe I’ll post that someday.

So, now, it is the second day of Twenty Thirteen and I didn’t make a New Year’s resolution. We didn’t even “celebrate” the New Year. We got home from our trip to the Midwest visiting our family on New Year’s Eve. After hauling everything out of the vehicle and into the house, Christmas had officially thrown up all over the kitchen- where everything was dumped.  I had to run to the local market to get milk and essentials and I saw a sign on the door that said they were closing at 6:00 pm.  WHY?! Oh, yeah, it’s that holiday that I haven’t celebrated for years.

I don’t know why I don’t celebrate. Perhaps it’s that I was a waitress and by the time I got off work it was too late to do anything which slowly evolved to sitting on the couch in pajamas and watching the ball drop at home, to having a baby and not being able to physically keep myself awake long enough to even find a station what was broadcasting the events, to life has taken over and I just don’t care anymore. For whatever reason, I don’t stay up late, drinking and partying. I wake up the next morning, life as normal, and head to Target for groceries before many people have even gotten a few hours of sleep. Which is fine.

On this second day of the New Year comes the realization that the “holidays” are over for the next 11-ish months. Well, 10 because I feel like Halloween should really be included since it is less than a month before Thanksgiving, but I’m sure people would throw a fit- haters gonna hate, right?! Otter had a lovely Christmas.  His Nana sure did spoil him rotten.  I guess that’s a benefit of being the only grandchild. Otter, Doc, and I spent a lot of time in the car together. And Chip went back to the North Pole. Otter was surprisingly okay with this.  His 7 and 8 year-old cousins, however, did not appreciate it as much.  Maybe it was because they only got to see the Elf for a few days. But, I loved spending the time with family and reconnecting.  I wish we could do it more often.  I never thought I would be the one living across the country from everyone I know and love.  But I (we) are and it’s alright.  It’s a feeling of independence that I love.  We three are in this together and we have each other to lean on.

I will work on preparing a post of all of Chip’s shenanigans.  I have to admit that I lost steam towards the end of the season.

Here’s to a Happy and Healthy New Year!

For the love of Pinterest

Why do the best ideas come at moments where you can’t do anything about them…like write them down? I had a magnificent idea for my next entry-something totally different than what I had been doing.  It hit me right as I was driving down the highway during rush hour. Kinda bad timing to whip out my Nexus and make some notes, ya think?  So, you are going to have to live with these random thoughts and blabberings about my obsession with Pinterest.

Anyways, I’m a huge Pinerest fanatic.  I love pinning things that I’m capable of doing and things that I’ll never get to in a million years but they look good on my boards. One of my favorite things to do is to make wreaths.  I saw a pin about using plumbing tubing from Lowe's to make your wreath base instead of buying the expensive wreath foam from the craft stores. Well, I’m here to tell you, I will just buy to expensive stuff, because clearly I’m doing something wrong.  When I cut my tube to the length I wanted to make the size of wreath I wanted and taped it together it wasn’t quite round. Convinced that I could disguise the wreath’s shape with the Christmas ornaments I’d bought to embellish the beautiful wreath I’d envisioned in my head, I proceeded with the time-consuming process of wrapping my wreath with the thin yarn you see adorning the beautiful wreaths all over Pinterest.  It became even more evident when the wreath was wrapped that it, definitely, wasn’t round. Intent on fixing the shape my Doc tried to help me re-tape the wreath and I wrapped over the new tape. Meh. Still not so hot. But I got my hot glue gun out and started gluing the decorations to the wreath.  Here is my final product.



Christmas Wreath Fail



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, the wreath isn’t thick enough. And it doesn’t hang properly.  This is actually a GOOD photo of the thing.  But I’ll show you that I can really make a wreath.  Here is one of my favorites.

Pretty Fall/All Seasons Wreath

But, to make up for the meek Holiday cheer the wreath gives, we decided to make and decorate sugar cones as trees…as seen on Pinterest. I didn’t go all out on supplies and decorations because I figured at Otter’s age, he was going to eat everything.  And as I suspected, he did. I just bought a box of sugar cones, red and green m&m’s, and a jar of frosting. I already had green food coloring at home.  Here’s how they turned out:

My Trees

 

 

 

 

 



Otter's Trees



 

 

 

 

 

 

On Display

 

What are some of your favorite Pinterest projects to do, with or without the kids?

NO!

“No! Mommy!” and “No, Mommy!” have become very regular phrases in our household. But they are driving me bat-crap crazy, as I mentioned in my last post. Accompanied with aggression towards Daddy and it is the biggest headache, EVER. Although, I have been reassured that this is very normal for a two year old, it didn’t ease my concern at all.

It all started when our Buzz kitty died.  Right after, Otter started screaming and pushing away Doc when he’d get home from work. Of course, after a long day, this hurt his feelings.  Otter just wanted me and me only (C’mon, kid! Can’t you see I’m cooking?!). After doing some reading online Doc explained that is normal and that the burden is on me to redirect Otter to show affection to his Daddy, again. So, I would show more affection to Doc and encourage Otter to do the same.  I’d have talks with Otter to explain to him how awesome Daddy is and that he can help him do anything that I can do, too. But, I think the biggest thing to redirect Otter was several events or evenings alone with Doc. He’s doing much better, now.  When Doc gets home he’ll occasionally shy away or try to push his daddy away but he is much more willing to go play with him while I cook dinner rather than attaching himself to me. But we are still working on the telling us “no” part.

This, to me, is humiliating. Normal but humiliating. There is nothing are few things worse than standing in the middle of Target and asking your child to stand up or stay with mommy and have him shout “No!” back at you. I can just feel the stares of disapproving strangers who think he’s probably nothing more than a snot-nosed brat who gets away with misbehaving (and there’s me who’s thinking “Are you kidding me, Kid?”). Not true. My little boy is sweet and caring. He just so happens to be testing his language and boundaries.  After fighting my initial urge of yelling, “NO! Don’t use that word with Mommy” I calmly get on his level, repeat my request and help him follow through. Let’s face it, telling a toddler “no” to get him to stop saying “no” really isn’t going to help things and it’s probably going to confuse it.  Sure, this tactic doesn’t always work and I often find myself wanting to wallow around on the floor with him, crying, because neither of us are understanding each other in that moment, but I pick us both up and head out of the store.

I know this is going to continue being an uphill battle.  What will probably happen is we will head out for the holidays with a nice, sweet boy who doesn’t use the naughty “no” and once we reach the grandparent’s houses “no” will appear again in the vocabulary, making us both look like wretched parents. But we love him!

Anways, we went and saw Santa and Mrs. Clause. Otter was pretty excited and even pulled me by the hand to go see them.  Now that I think of it, I don’t think Otter asked for anything. It’s a good thing we can tell Chip, our Elf on the Shelf, what he’d like for Christmas!

Don't you be a turkey

Hey there!  I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving!  This is the first year in a quite a long time that we didn’t travel. Papaw visited and I prepared my first ever Thanksgiving feast. We had a good day.  Otter really enjoyed a visit from Papaw and is still taking about it several days later.

We also had a visit from a special Elf on the Shelf named Chip- as in Chocolate Chip.  The elf has been up to a few shenanigans. Otter doesn’t quite understand WHY Chip is here but he welcomes his company all the same.  I’ll post a few sneak peak photos, but will follow up the Christmas season with all the Chip has done.

We did our first Holiday related events, picked up our very first live Christmas tree which was promptly decorated.  Otter was really in to it.  However, he was having troubles placing the ornaments on the tree so he had a really good time handing me ornaments to put on the tree. We then went to a quick and chilly Fire Truck parade in a nearby village.  Otter loves fire trucks and was pretty thrilled by the experience, but if you asked him if he saw trucks or Santa, he will tell you “no”.

That leads me to the terrible two’s we are dealing with. Otter, has taken to telling us “no” always. This is incredibly frustrating. I understand that this is normal phase of a two year old, but Doc and I can’t help but be irritated when we ask our son to pick up his shoes and he yells “no” with a smile on his face. This, usually, leads to a time out because even when I offer another opportunity to do what we’ve asked he doesn’t budge and uses the naughty word, again. Seriously frustrating. Why do toddlers have to be so stubborn?!

Anyways, any suggestions on how to deal with phase would be openly welcomed.  We’ve got a nice weekend planned with a visit to Santa and maybe Otter will make a few Christmas presents for some of his grandparents.

The tree-partially decorated.

Chip with his milk and cookies

Chip in the tree

Dealing with Death

Wow, it’s been a really long time.  I bet you didn’t think I was even coming back. But, I did. 

A lot has changed since I last blogged to you about my crazy life as a mother. We have moved across the country to New England!  Yay!  It’s beautiful here.  Our little town seemed to survive Superstorm Sandy just fine.  But my thoughts are with those who are still recovering and rebuilding. Doc and I have new jobs, obviously, since we left the mid-west. And we bought a big OLD colonial home that we are trying to morph into our dream home.  Doc has come in handy in that aspect.  I don’t know how I managed to marry such a multi-talented man, but he’s doing a damn good job on the house.

Sadly, my first post back is going to touch a sad subject and something that we’ve recently had to deal with recently- death.  Otter, about 4 weeks ago, was given a kitten that we named Buzz. Sweet little orange tabby cat who somehow managed to survive everything our 2 year old had to offer. However, Buzz got out of the house the other night while I was making a trip out to the garage to get something. My hands were full when I got back to the house and I wasn’t able to scoop him up.  When I returned, I couldn’t find him.  He had always stuck close to the house and usually danced around when I called for him.  So, Otter and I donned our coats and shoes, grabbed a flashlight and went looking for him.  We looked for a while and then I finally heard a weak mew from under our front porch. Buzz stuck his sleepy little head out and I snatched him up to carry him inside. 

It wasn’t until in the light of our home that I could see that Buzz was a mess.  He looked filthy and Doc said he just didn’t look right.  Upon further investigation, Buzz had some major wounds to the underside of his little body and I rushed him to the nearest emergency vet 30 minutes away. After meeting with the vet and discussing the treatment options, costs, and outcomes it was decided that Buzz was to be put to sleep.  It wasn’t an easy decision and one of my first thoughts was of what Otter would do/think when he realized Buzz was gone.  The two of them were inseparable.  

Before I had left to take Buzz to the vet, knowing that this outcome was possible, Otter said “bye-bye” to Buzz and Doc explained Buzz had lots of ouchies. This, it seemed, was our saving grace.  The next morning when Otter woke up and asked for Buzz, tears immediately filled my eyes and I choked on the words as I explained to Otter that Buzz had ouchies and had to go bye-bye. I told Otter that Buzz loved him very much. I grappled with how to explain this to Otter. Did I tell him Buzz went to a special farm, that he’s gone, or that he died?  What words do you use to explain to a 2-year-old that their kitty is gone? 

Well, I’ll tell you that Otter has accepted Buzz’s leaving with amazing grace and resilience. “Bye-bye” seemed to be a good choice of words for him.  He will still say “Buzz go bye-bye” as a statement but a little later will ask if “Daddy go bye-bye” or if Emma (our dog) went bye-bye.  And I explain to him that, no, Daddy is at work and Emma is in the house. Then he will correct himself and say Buzz had ouchies and had to go bye-bye.  Sure, he probably doesn’t understand that Buzz is never coming back and he definitely doesn’t understand what death is, but we approached it in the manner that we did and Otter seems to have handled it well.

As parents, it’s always tough to approach serious topics with our kids and we worry about doing it in an age appropriate matter. How have you handled sensitive issues, like death, with your children?

Oh, and I promise, we have much more light hearted posts coming.  I mean, we have an Elf coming to live with us for the next month. What could be more fun than that?!

Bye Buzz Kitty, we will miss you!