Oh, this thing?

Seriously fallen off the blogging wagon. Halloween is right around the corner. No pumpkins, no decorations, but I do have candy and costumes for the kids. So at least there is that.

12 more days until my birthday?! Andy is going to come up for it. Thank goodness! 

He has about 24 more days left with his TDY. 

I count myself lucky, that's he's close enough that he can come home on long weekends. (It's about a 6 hour drive.) I know typically, most military spouses don't get that. 

We've been getting by with a lot of "Where's daddy?" Wilson will then say "Daddy at school." So I think he kind of understands? 

The kids have been getting over random sickness for the past week. Whatever bug they both have is super resilient in little kids and refuses to die! 

I don't know how I haven't gotten sick yet. So we've been stuck inside a lot. The kids get stir crazy, and it doesn't help, that if they look out the window, they see a playground! 

Thursday evening, Andy surprised me, by coming home without me knowing! A neighbor boy had come to the door around 630 and wanted to see if the kids could come out and play. I had just thrown them in the bath though. So I went back up and started texting Andy while the kids played in the bath. He then was like "I think there's someone at the door." 

So I went down and saw it was him! :-) 

He's so cute. Then he had major baby aggro all weekend long. (And probably couldn't wait to go back down! Lol) 

The kids get really whiny with him being back, and have tantrums a little more. Plus, they were both still sickly. Callie more so than Wilson. 

Last night was a doozy, it's 10 pm and both the kids were still wide awake. I think the sickness has messed with our schedule a little bit. 

Hopefully, I  can find more time, and the drive to keep up my blog a little better. 

Christmas in October!

We keep joking about how we start seeing Christmas stuff earlier and earlier, and no doubt, Halloween hasn't even occurred yet, but I'm already seeing Christmas stuff out at different stores.

So naturally, it's time to start figuring stuff out. Since my best friend and I have our "completed" family, I thought it would be cute as part of their Christmas gift to get them matching PJs.  I've done 2 Christmases so far.


Here's Christmas 2011:

I apparently failed at getting Callie a matching set, but she was only 3 weeks old. Whoops. But anyways, look at our babies!


Christmas 2012:

Oh I loved loved loved last years PJs! Just precious!

This year there is a slight challenge to find matching/complimenting pjs, that the girls can both match in. Because Kaitlyn is just growing too fast!

I adore Carters. I really do. So this year so far what I can find matching for the girls:

or:

I love them both! So cute!

And here are the boys that kind of match but not.
Snowman:

or Santa:

So much cuteness. Maybe one year we will be able to get all 4 kids together in their matching PJs!! 

Our first TDY.

So yesterday, Andy left to go for his first TDY. He will be gone for 2 months. We threw around the idea of trying to move before he left, but weren't able to do it. 

On one hand I wish we could have, because living in Florida would mean a really short drive to see him. (It would be maybe a little over 3 hours). Compared to staying here where it's over 6. 

But I am not ready to leave my friends yet! I feel so lucky to have met such wonderful ladies during my time here.

Women who I draw strength from, admire, and have a great time with. 

Wilson has two therapies he goes to during the week as well, and I wanted to make sure he could continue them, until we move. When I hope I can get him into a more social setting/pre school. 

I think he would be willing to learn more with his peers, than with these individual sessions he gets. 

Potty training has been going okay. We have had a couple accidents here and there. And I'm okay with that. 

Unfortunately, the whole pooping thing, I am at a loss with. He now holds it, and doesn't want to poop. And will wait, until it's literally coming out, and run to the potty. And freak out a bit. 

I thought we had praised/treated him enough for him to associate good things with pooping in the potty. But now he's definitely like, "Nope." 

The hardest thing is making him use the bathroom before we leave anywhere. He gets so excited about leaving he won't go potty. 

Typical right? 

So 61 more days until daddy can come home, and then hopefully we will move!

I think it may fall on me to get this move all planned and scheduled. Eek. 

Also here's a picture of Callie at the park, picking flowers. The most girliest thing she could possibly do at the park. Instead of you know, playing! 

Warning for you non-children having adults: This post is about my son potty training.

Blogging here, which will get shared onto my facebook, so if you've already read the title, and are rolling your eyes at my parenting post. Please, keep scrolling. Because IDGAF if you don't care about my kid's potty training.

Wiping my kid's butt for over 3 years, I think I deserve a blog post about it. (Oh, and a sidenote, looks like I'm still wiping butts here for a while, just because the kid can sit on a potty, doesn't mean he knows how to wipe well.)

Is blogging about this on day 3 a little too soon? Am I jumping the gun? Probably. Is this all just a fluke? I keep waking up thinking it is.

I have had nightmares, breakdowns, envisioning all sorts of random scenarios on how this would play out. Most of them involving screaming, crying, and poop everywhere. (I'd be the one crying and screaming.)

But so far? Day 3? Wow. I don't know if I waited right at that perfect sweet spot. Or if it's just sheer, dumb, luck.

Because besides the first tantrum of not wanting to wear the training pants. (Fine, go naked.) He has been just amazing.

Day one: 3 accidents and 9. YES YOU READ RIGHT. 9 pee-pees in the potty. (I gave this kid a lot of juice.) Then I decided to be a dumb-ass and put him in a diaper and take him to the park. (In case you are wondering, he pooped in it.)

I praised him, treated him, high-fived him, hugged him. And when he had his accidents I told him he has to be a big boy and go in the potty, and next time he will do better.

Day two: Had a morning appointment, so I had to put him in a diaper. When we came at lunch time, I took the diaper off, and off he went. First thing he did? POOPED IN IT.

 
Seriously kid? Your second day of potty training, and you even had a diaper on in the morning, and you did this? You get a lollipop. So then we continue this wonderful day of peeing in the potty, and what's that??? A SECOND POOP IN THE POTTY????

There are no words.

We did have an accident after bath time though. Kids were playing in the bedroom, jumping around, and he got a little too excited and peed on the carpet. I rolled a newspaper up and swatted him on the nose. < Not true.

But now came the doubts. He was waaaayyy too into playing to stop and go potty. This, I think, is where the real battle begins. Sure, I can have him half naked and just keep him sectioned off to one area in the house. But in real life, where he has to wear pants and cover up his genitals. I'm going to have to be on him. Like a poop and pee watching hawk.

And now here we are in the middle of day 3. Pees and poop in the potty. And I put him in training pants last night, and I didn't have to wash his sheets. Overnight dryness is a whole 'nother thing. And one that I wasn't going to try to do, but I figured with him doing so well, why not? He woke up and had a very small amount of pee in his training pants. But not enough to even soak them. I even did a premature happy dance, because he felt dry, and I was like "I am awesome."

Anyways. This is where I am at right now. My life sounds pretty awesome right? Makes you childless couples just want to go ahead and have a kid right now. Or you are rolling your eyes and saying over the screen, "Oh, when I have kids, I'll never act stupid like this chick here."

And this is me, to you.

"I can't wait to watch you eat your words."

My kid is doing another pee-pee on the potty. Time to go grab the m&m and do my dance now. See ya later.

This is what a month of mids looks like.

About 4-5 pictures, and a couple paragraphs....

So back in August, Andy was working mid shift. (And still is.) And yeah, complete disinterest in keeping up the blog. Nothing really to blog about, just daily routine. 

I probably have more pictures to share, but here's a few. Andy has about another week of doing mid shift, and then will be getting ready to go TDY for 2 months. Hopefully, I will find more to blog about when he leaves, our first separation as a family of 4. Compared to when he left for Basic Training when Wilson was just a baby, but we lived in Indiana, so I had lots of help and friends and family. Compared to now.

On a side note, POTTY TRAINING! IT HAS BEGUN. I'll have to blog about that in another post. I'm glad I waited. This is just the beginning, but I'm so happy with how he has done so far at home. I just need to keep on him. I had hoped maybe I'd get both kids potty trained, but right now  I'm more interested in getting him first. I think it makes it more special for him too. Which makes him more motivated to do it.

Life in pictures.

This is what life looks like when you have a husband working Midnight shift in the hottest part of summer. Staying mostly inside! Playing with our toys, our most beloved, Ipad. Getting a drink while outside, because it's hot. And my favorite is snuggle time with my little snuggle bunny, or bunnies.

Lazy Anna is lazy.

Okay, so my desire to keep up on my blog has almost non-existant. Whoops.

About the middle of last month, the kids, and more specifically, Wilson, contracted a really nasty bug.
We didn't realize Wilson was sick yet, until he stood up on the couch, with our Ipad in his hands, and then threw up all over it, and the couch. Lucky for us, we invested in a Survivor case for our Ipad. And thank goodness. Because he heaved all over it. That was a late night. Staying up having to bathe and change Wilson and put him to bed, take apart the ipad in it's case and clean the puke off it, and try to clean the couch. Little did I know, this would be the beginning of almost 3 days of hell.

And when I mean hell, I mean diarrhea. Just.non.stop.

On the worst day, Wilson had 5 baths. In one day. He would cry and ask us to give him a bath instead, because his bottom was so raw from pooping. He also refused to drink Sprite or Gatorade, or water. Just wanted milk. Which I was not going to give him, after his puke-fest the previous night.

Callie wasn't at bad. At first. I thought she wasn't going to get sick at all. But on the second day, she had the diarrhea as well. They both finally stopped on the 3rd day. I'm lucky we had just bought diapers, because we went through so many in just those 3 days.

I'm sure one day, I'll look back at this poop-ageddon, and think "I remember the poop-ageddon of 2013. It was hell."

So that was about 2 weeks ago. Now on this fine August 1st. We learned really wonderful news. Back in July, (Andy was a boss and took his Staff Sergeant test on like the last day you could test.) Andy took a test that if he did well on, would make him move up in rank.

Well, this morning, we found out that he indeed passed it! So our journey in this military life is now having a new chapter in it. One in which, Andy will soon be given more responsibilities.

I'm nervous to see if our orders to Florida gets cancelled though. I have heard about that happening, and am nervous as to what the military is going to have in store for us. Hopefully, nothing changes and we will still make our way to Florida.

At some point, maybe I should try to blog a little more.