The Secret to Pooh

Ah, yes just what you signed up for; a blog about poo.  Not Winnie the Pooh, the other kind of poo.  I know when you looked up the blog this morning you wanted to read about our trials and tribulations of getting our nearly 2 1/2 year old to poo somewhere, anywhere, other than his pants.  We are in, what we hope, are the final stages of potty training.  (After further research we learned it may take nearly 10 months to be fully trained.  I could've gone a lifetime without that tidbit of knowledge). We took the plunge this past weekend and had Quinny in straight up whitey tighties.  We went for a diaper free weekend. 

Q sporting the Risky Business look

It all started when I came home to meet up with Carrie to buy Quinny his big boy bed.  Of course it was a beautiful calm day with winds in the 35 mph range and a gentle sideways rain giving your face a nice little hello slap if you were brave enough to go outside.  We, being such experienced parents, immediately got cold feed.  Here is an excerpt:  "What if he starts escaping?  I mean he could just get up - at any time.  You know like 4 am.  Um, our other kid already wakes us up every day around 4:30. Ya, but that extra half hour of sleep is sweeeeet!  Maybe we should just buy another crib so they are both trapped until we decide to let them out.  You know we have that dog kennel.  You're so insensitive Care!"  So, yup! we decided to buy another crib just after G-man turned six months old.  No time like the present!  Dear, Child and Family Services we are not implying he's sleeping on the floor.  Oh, Carrie is telling me to write or a cardboard box.  Nope, not a box either.

We dug out the old research from when we had free time, approximately 2 1/2 years ago, found the crib we wanted and headed off to Target in the local 40 degree monsoon.  The nice thing about four seasons is it never really warms up.  It snows, it rains, it hails, it never gets above 40.  I really enjoy that kind of consistency.  It was prom on Saturday - it snowed.  Spring, I really have missed it!  We head out to Target, immediately find the crib we wanted, upgraded to the more expensive one next to it.  This is working out great!  Yup, we'll take that merlot color and a bottle of merlot since we're here.  We grab this handy card that says bring to the register, fork over your hard earned cash and some nice employee sporting Badger red will bring the crib straight away to your car.  Yipee!  Except, and you need glasses to read the fine print, you want the merlot color.  Did I say one bottle of merlot?  Ya, well, better make that two.  You can only get the merlot color online.  Fantastic.  Because the weather is so beautiful outside I've really enjoyed wasting my time.  Someone, anyone, please explain to me why a store would only stock one color? Does this make any sense to anyone working outside of Target?  If only I could bring myself to shop at Wal-Mar...(I can't even print it for fear ads will begin to show up).  Thankfully, there are plenty of cribs in the sea.

Sleeping, but not in a crib :(

So we head back home firmly mired in square one and begin to see what it will take to get this thing delivered.  It turns out that this particular crib, the upgraded one, emits formaldehyde, but only when your kid is sleeping in it so you have that little extra bonus.  The salesman neglected to explain that feature.  Interestingly enough, that wasn't part of the fine print either.  Did I just say we were back to square one?  Touche! Now, we are back to square one.  Alas, we fish for another crib and find just the one we want.  This site wants $75 for shipping.  Yikes.  We find it one Amazon - free shipping!  However, apparently they have guys in the back that need to cut the tree down and build it.  There is a 3 month waiting list.  Our kid may turn 21 before he gets a place to sleep.  At this point I bowed out of the crib fiasco.  I am starting to think they can probably just share a crib.  Brothers don't shake hands, brothers hug.  Presumably the crib thing worked itself out.  I'm just going to sit back and wait until the Fed Ex guy rings the door bell.  Thanks, o' patient wife o' mine.

But this post was about poo, so let me get back to the poo.  We really thought we would be traumatizing our poor son if we took his bah, stopped letting him soil himself 12 times a day and put him in a big boy bed all in the same month.  That just seems cruel and unusual.  So, one thing at a time and those diapers need to go.  He ran around in the tighties all weekend long. He has a tendency to only have an accident when he's wearing pants.  Doesn't it always work that way?  It's cool to pee your pants!  Fortunately for us he does enjoy showing off that booty and prefers to go pantless when sporting the tighties so we had two accidents on Saturday and none on Sunday.  He doesn't like to poo in the toilet though.  I totally get it.  Who does?  So we were just coaxing and coaxing to get him to go.  He hasn't pooped in his underwear yet, but I am pretty sure I don't want to be in the house the first time it happens.  I mean my imagination is running wild with that scenario and I have a pretty good imagination. Okay, so let's just not go there.  Let's keep Mr. Hankey where he belongs.   

Carrie and I were heading out for dinner on Saturday so Heather was gracious enough to come over to watch the kiddos.  Since we go out roughly once a year these days we were busy getting ready.  Quinny snuck off and dropped off a little surprise on his own.  Who knew?  The lil' man just wanted a little privacy to do his business. Now, that I can understand.  The next day he did the same thing.  Alright, I think we are making some sweet progress.  We sent him off to school today for the real test today.  Here are 7 pairs of pants and 15 pairs of underoos. Earn your dollars this week, Earn em' teach!  I was so excited when I came home from work today to see how he did.  A+! Not one accidental wazzer.  He didn't poo but I suspect if he gets a newspaper and a good 10 minutes by himself he'll be just fine.  That's the secret.  Do nothing.  This parenting thing is too easy.

It's good to be back

I'm baaaaaack!  I had a rough time at the office for a little bit.  It's hard to write a blog about kids when you're POed! I'm thinking about starting a whole other blog that would be less kid friendly, but undoubtedly funnier.  Seriously, you wouldn't believe what I go through on a daily basis.  Dilbert's got nothing on my work life. 

We've had some nice weekends and it appears that spring has finally settled in.  We are getting some much needed outdoor time and that's made our household much less stressful.  If we could just hit one of those multi-hundred million dollar jackpots we would be set.  The boys are doing well and appear to have finally gotten over the near constant winter colds.  Gavin weighed in a couple of weeks ago at 18 pounds and four ounces when he finally was well enough to get his four month old shots on March 29th.  He's getting big already. He just turned six months old!  It's hard to believe when we moved here Carrie was still pregnant and we didn't even know if we would have a boy or girl.  Now we have a six month old boy.  He's learning how to sit up and roll over but isn't quite there yet.  He's chomping on everything in sight trying to cut his first tooth, which we think will show up soon.  Quinny got his tooth before he turned 6 months old.  If you want to bust out your flux capacitor and go back in time I posted pictures here.

Really young driving age in IA

Quinny is still throwing the occasional tantrum but we are starting to wear him down.  Ignore, ignore, ignore.  The time outs have subsided at home, and at school they tell us they don't work.  He enjoys them.  Who wouldn't enjoy a little quiet time alone? He's a bit of a follower and there is a trouble maker or two he's buddies with.  Carrie witnessed a minor incident the other day when she picked the boys up. The trouble making kid, we'll call him Billy so no lawsuits can be filed, was jabbing his little bad boy finger at the chest of my poor kid.  Now we do teach a mean right cross but we teach restraint first so Quinny was pretty upset.  Well Billy's 17 year old parents weren't very good about parenting.  I mean let's face it, we've been doing this for nearly 30 months already so clearly we are the experts and these people were crappy parents plain and simple as we could deduce from this 90 second or so of insight into the lives of this family.  So, my wife did what any expert parent would in this situation.  She grabbed the offensive lil' Billy by the ear and took him over her knee.  A few good whacks and the situation was rectified to our satisfaction.  Billy's momma had the look of a shocked that's how you parent? look.  At least that's what I took from her jaw hitting the floor.  At any rate Billy doesn't mess with the Q-dog anymore.  Gold star parenting.

Lucky, still living large

This weekend we are looking to move Quinny to a bed.  We did some bed shopping last weekend.  We walked into the bed factory store and Carrie tried out some beds.  How much is that one?  $279.  And that one over there?  $576.  Uh-huh.  Well, let's see my bed costs a lot so is $300 reasonable for a kid's bed?  Who knows this stuff? Why isn't there a manual for child rearing? No, I mean a non-psycho-babble book. Million dollar idea?? I knew I was going to have buyer's remorse so we left.  We get in the car and go to another furniture store down the street.  This place didn't really sell beds but they had some cheapo ones.  How much is that one? $129.  Uh-huh.  I see.  Okay, let me think this through.  I look at Care and ask, "As a kid did you even once complain that your bed was uncomfortable?"  Puzzled look.  Hard thinking expression on her face.  You know the one.  The one where you get the eyes looking up in the corner and the wrinkled forehead as her brain flips through all those years as a child and wah-la, "No, never."  Okay, Mr. Furniture guy?  Ya, where is the cheapest bed you sell? We'll take that one.  Pee on that my potty training friend.  We'll make it up to you in college tuition!  I mean after careful thought and the realization that my son weighs 30 some odd pounds does it even matter?  I mean I could pitch him a tent in the middle of his room and he would be stoked to spend the next 6 years in that thing.  We'll let you know how it turns out when he walks into our room at 4:30 in the morning instead of just crying Momma! and us finally having a big enough house to sleep through it, or is that me sleeping though it?  Exactly, no problem here.