Sounds like fun

My mom bought Kathleen a CD for Christmas, "Sounds like Fun". It is from Discovery Toys and has lots of educational songs. It is really good to listen to but, as with most children's CDs, it is so repetitive that it is nearly like water torture to me now! I go around humming the phonics ABC song and the 12 months of the year song... argh...

What is NOT fun -- my cold. It started as a sore throat. Then it was a full-fledged chest cold yesterday afternoon. A cocktail of expectorant cough syrup, Mucinex, coca-cola with ginger (more on that later) and, finally, Nyquil helped me get some rest and helped to break of some of the congestion. Still not fun though.

K has been having some cold/cough issues too. She doesn't want to sleep in her own bed. I can't figure out why. She's also been finding her Tylenol bottle and bringing it to me more often (obviously I don't give it to her EVERY time she brings it over!)... It does help me to know that she is hurting (sore throat?) so it's good she can communicate that. She's been sleeping in bed with me but she tosses/turns/thrashes around so many that it's not very restful for me. I am letting her nap and/or fall asleep in her highchair/booster seat because it reclines and she seems to fall asleep easier in there.

What is also NOT fun -- starting potty training. My mom said that I wasn't trained until after I was 2 years old; of course my little brother was born when I was nearly 2, so I'm sure that didn't help my situation! It took my brother even longer. Mom said that she & my aunt Norma had gone to pick up my grandma from the hospital, so they left my brother at my aunt Jan's house. SHE had him potty trained in one day there! Mom isn't sure if it was because he was around our older cousin Gregg or what. She was flabbergasted! I am taking Heidi's advice since she's been through potty training more times than anyone I know because she worked with toddlers and 3s for 10 years. I'm trying to get K to be aware when she goes wee-wee or 'icky'. I bought some training pants to use on the weekends at home. I had to go back and find the ones with the plastic outer shell so it won't leak all over. She definitely DOESN'T like it when she's wet. The next step will be to get her to associate going with sitting on the potty. We're not there yet. My plan it to let her wear the training pants and training/plastic pants to bed at night so she knows what it feels like to be wet. Then she can wear diapers at daycare. They DO have a little bathroom/toilet in the toddler room, so when she's ready they'll be ready to help her.

On to other things...
My apartment is a disaster. I confess it. I used to have plenty of hangers and now it seems like I don't have ANY. I am tired of my clothes being piled up everywhere so I bought some more hangers. We literally have 100 hangers at our house in Appleton but I figured that Todd wouldn't be willing to mail them to me so I just bought some more. Hopefully that will help get things put back and more organized.

I LOVE my Roomba iRobot vacuum cleaner. I absolutely love it. I cleaned up everything off the bedroom floors and let it loose. I don't know why, but as soon as I set it loose, I get more motivated to clean up the rest of the house. :) Yea! I did a couple of loads of laundry so I hope to get everything put away and then it will be time for bed. Ah!

What I could really use is rest. A good, dependable babysitter on the weekends to give me a chance to clean up around here or take a nap. Or, ideally, for our house to sell & have Todd out here to spend some daddy-daughter time with K on the weekends.

- Tanya

Potty Princess

A few weeks before Christmas, I changed K's diaper and then decided she might as well just take a bath (it was the weekend). I was chuckling that she was standing there completely naked and even said, "Hey! You're naked in the living room! Don't go wee-wee on the carpet!" Sure enough... she went wee-wee on the carpet AND on me (which made me yelp out of sheer shock!)... So I called Todd & we decided that maybe she was ready for a potty chair. I gave her tiny pieces of candy cane to encourage her to sit on the potty, just to get used to it.

Then we went home for Christmas break. Now that we're back, I went to the library and got a "potty" dvd for her. She was fascinated! Now she's not really ready to START using it, but she is signaling to me when she's gone in her diaper and she likes to go to or point to the potty, so she's starting to make the connection. Of course, the dvd shows how you can train newborns to "go wee-wee" on command (uhhh, really?! Why?!) & into a toilet (if you hold them, naturally)...or on the ground (double ugh...)...or into a bowl, etc. Yeah. That was a bit much for me.

So, she's a potty princess right now. Not the Queen of the potty chair yet, but we're working on it.

Oh, and by the way, I got a cute note from a second grader yesterday that said "Your the best princebull ever, Mrs. Jonson." I LOVE IT!!! :)

- Tanya, your favorite "princebull"... ;)