- thoroughly clean my house
- donate many things (toys, books, clothes, shoes)
- maintain a schedule to get caleb on track for school
- read a lot of books since i don't read a lot during the school year
- go to the library once a week
- maintain a good cooking schedule and don't rely on eating out...cook all meals during the weekdays
- put up a bookshelf in my mom's room
- work out at least four times a week with dave
Monday, May 28, 2012
summer goals
i was inspired to do some summer goals by someone else's blog...so here goes...and like she said, who knows if it will get done (depends on if i feel like it), but here it is...
new obsessions
caleb's new obsession is dinosaurs, and being the elephant brains that he is, he's devouring information and repeating it back to us like the little professor he is. we thought that he was giving us false information when he kept saying that the stegosaurus has 17 plates on its back, but then as we were reading dave found out that it's true...it's not the sticky up plates, but i guess some other kind of bone plates on its back so we had to apologize for insisting to caleb that he was wrong. lol. it's really interesting to learn about dinosaurs all over again so i kind of like this new obsession.
brynna doesn't have any obsessions besides chips. she loves chips. she loves veggie chips, potato chips, any kind of chips. she's like me...more into the salty than the sweet. she also continually surprises me with things that she knows...like counting to ten in spanish, knowing animals that i don't expect her to know, being able to do the alphabet puzzle when we tell her what picture to look for, comprehending more questions and answering appropriately. she also loves to be read to, which gets exhausting because she always wants another book, another book, another book. she also is the queen of the mad face...i can't imagine where she learned that mad face from...hehe!
brynna doesn't have any obsessions besides chips. she loves chips. she loves veggie chips, potato chips, any kind of chips. she's like me...more into the salty than the sweet. she also continually surprises me with things that she knows...like counting to ten in spanish, knowing animals that i don't expect her to know, being able to do the alphabet puzzle when we tell her what picture to look for, comprehending more questions and answering appropriately. she also loves to be read to, which gets exhausting because she always wants another book, another book, another book. she also is the queen of the mad face...i can't imagine where she learned that mad face from...hehe!
potty training
so potty training boot camp began on friday, may 25th. we tried to follow the three-day potty training method which tells you to go bare butt or loose shorts (not underwear or pullups) and that after three days the kids would get it and pee in the potty.
the first to successfully pee in the potty was....brynna!!! she was refusing to sit on the potty but then dave noticed her moving toward the corner by the tv and told her to sit down on the potty and for some reason she listened...and a few seconds later, she surprised us and herself when we heard the pee hitting the potty! YAY! she got two m&ms for her peeing and after seeing that, caleb was determined. by the end of day one he'd peed in the potty three times (standing up at the real toilet, not in the potty). they both had multiple accidents, but it seemed like caleb was getting the hang of it while brynna was heading in the opposite direction and refusing to even sit on the potty anymore.
day two caleb really got the hang of it and even started working the system by peeing every 15 minutes to get his reward. brynna, on the other hand, was not getting it at all. we knew she wanted to doodoo but she refused to sit down and it ended up that the doodoo eventually fell out of her butt and i had to catch it with a napkin. luckily she makes dry round balls of doodoo and not wet kine so that was do-able. caleb also refused to make doodoo on the potty and we knew that he needed to so he ended up doing it in the pullups before we went to bed.
by day three you're supposed to make the connection between going to the potty right before leaving the house. unfortunately we didn't do that, but caleb seemed to be really getting it with the exception of the doodoo. he started doing this really funny dance and we knew it was because he needed to doodoo but he refused to do it on the potty. brynna we've pretty much given up on for the time being...i should have known she would be more difficult because if she doesn't want to do something, it ain't happening.
today we actually left the house...he used the potty at leish's house, which was his first potty use outside so that was good. then we went to sam's club and he said he wanted to pee but after standing there for forever and nothing coming out i told him it was enough. he proceeded to throw a small fit but got over it. then he told dave he wanted to go so dave took him and when he wouldn't do anything dave told him it was enough and he proceeded to throw a huge fit. luckily he didn't pee on the way home, which we were worried about. he's taking a nap right now with underwear on so we'll see if he's dry when he wakes up.
overall i'd say this potty training experience was less traumatic (for me) than i expected it to be. thankfully it looks like caleb will be able to go to school in august :-). brynna....we'll just have to work on this little stubborn head a little bit more.
the first to successfully pee in the potty was....brynna!!! she was refusing to sit on the potty but then dave noticed her moving toward the corner by the tv and told her to sit down on the potty and for some reason she listened...and a few seconds later, she surprised us and herself when we heard the pee hitting the potty! YAY! she got two m&ms for her peeing and after seeing that, caleb was determined. by the end of day one he'd peed in the potty three times (standing up at the real toilet, not in the potty). they both had multiple accidents, but it seemed like caleb was getting the hang of it while brynna was heading in the opposite direction and refusing to even sit on the potty anymore.
day two caleb really got the hang of it and even started working the system by peeing every 15 minutes to get his reward. brynna, on the other hand, was not getting it at all. we knew she wanted to doodoo but she refused to sit down and it ended up that the doodoo eventually fell out of her butt and i had to catch it with a napkin. luckily she makes dry round balls of doodoo and not wet kine so that was do-able. caleb also refused to make doodoo on the potty and we knew that he needed to so he ended up doing it in the pullups before we went to bed.
by day three you're supposed to make the connection between going to the potty right before leaving the house. unfortunately we didn't do that, but caleb seemed to be really getting it with the exception of the doodoo. he started doing this really funny dance and we knew it was because he needed to doodoo but he refused to do it on the potty. brynna we've pretty much given up on for the time being...i should have known she would be more difficult because if she doesn't want to do something, it ain't happening.
today we actually left the house...he used the potty at leish's house, which was his first potty use outside so that was good. then we went to sam's club and he said he wanted to pee but after standing there for forever and nothing coming out i told him it was enough. he proceeded to throw a small fit but got over it. then he told dave he wanted to go so dave took him and when he wouldn't do anything dave told him it was enough and he proceeded to throw a huge fit. luckily he didn't pee on the way home, which we were worried about. he's taking a nap right now with underwear on so we'll see if he's dry when he wakes up.
overall i'd say this potty training experience was less traumatic (for me) than i expected it to be. thankfully it looks like caleb will be able to go to school in august :-). brynna....we'll just have to work on this little stubborn head a little bit more.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
cool beans and random stuff
before i begin writing other things, just had to share that caleb just said, in the right context, "cool beans." hehe. he then said, "twist says cool beans. that's from fresh beat band." i dunno if that's where that saying originated, but that's pretty funny. now on to other things.
okay, i hang my head in shame and admit that until this past weekend, we were still getting up at least once a night and giving brynna milk. yes, we know she shouldn't be drinking milk at two years old. yes, we know it's bad for her teeth. and yes, for selfish reasons, i kept doing it because i wanted to sleep and not deal with her crying. i kept telling myself that at the next break, we'd break her habit...and i never did it. this past friday my mom said, "you guys close your windows and your door and let her cry...stop giving her milk at night." so we listened. and it was a lot less painless than i anticipated. as of last night she's still getting up and crying, but not for long. hopefully by the the weekend she'll stop the crying at night and just sleep.
in two and a half weeks (on may 25th to be exact), the potty training officially will begin for both kids. it's going to be painful and we'll probably have to be on house-arrest for a while, but it has to get done. my plan for the summer is to also get them into the same schedule that caleb will follow when he starts school in august so that he'll be used to it and will be trained to eat and pee and sleep when he's supposed to. he likes to sleep in, so he'll have to get used to an earlier bedtime and a much earlier waking up time. the only thing that's going to throw that off a little bit is that i have a workshop on june 26-29 but hopefully the schedule is pretty well-ingrained by then.
brynna is talking a lot more...still pretty unclear most of the time...but after getting her test results back and seeing that she actually knows and can do quite a lot, i'm not as worried as i was. she's started to say her abc's so i'm happy...i was a little worried there for a while because caleb picked up the alphabet really quickly and it seemed like she just wasn't learning it at all.
caleb is frickin addicted to games on nickjr.com and though a lot of them actually require him to use his brain and learn some cool things, i'm not so keen on the one that he loves the most, which is just jumping and collecting crap. i'm not a gamer at all, so games in general seem like a big waste of time to me but dave insists that it does help him with eye-hand coordination and problem solving. caleb was getting ridiculous for a while and pitching a huge fit and fighting when it came time to get off the computer but after some good scoldings and spanks, he's learned that when i start the count, he better get his butt off that damn computer.
we took the kids to tash's may day and our school's band concert this past weekend. caleb is a really good audience member...he sits still and watches, enthralled, for pretty much the whole show. brynna is less focused, but she was pretty good too, seeing as how both were at least two hours long.
as the school year comes to an end, i'm actually pretty sad. this is the first year in a while that i really, really, really like my kids. even though i'm at that "little patience for shenanigans, dammit" level at this point, i still know i'm going to be sad to say bye to a lot of these kids. i've been with my avid kids for homeroom, avid and english so i'll really miss them and there are a few others who i'm really going to miss too. i am looking forward to the summer, though, and being able to be home with the kids all day. there's a lot of cleaning that needs to be done (my freakin' floors are horrendous right about now because they haven't been scrubbed down in forever) and a lot of crap that needs to be donated or dumped.
holy smokes, maybe i should write more often so i don't have novel length entries like this one...lol.
okay, i hang my head in shame and admit that until this past weekend, we were still getting up at least once a night and giving brynna milk. yes, we know she shouldn't be drinking milk at two years old. yes, we know it's bad for her teeth. and yes, for selfish reasons, i kept doing it because i wanted to sleep and not deal with her crying. i kept telling myself that at the next break, we'd break her habit...and i never did it. this past friday my mom said, "you guys close your windows and your door and let her cry...stop giving her milk at night." so we listened. and it was a lot less painless than i anticipated. as of last night she's still getting up and crying, but not for long. hopefully by the the weekend she'll stop the crying at night and just sleep.
in two and a half weeks (on may 25th to be exact), the potty training officially will begin for both kids. it's going to be painful and we'll probably have to be on house-arrest for a while, but it has to get done. my plan for the summer is to also get them into the same schedule that caleb will follow when he starts school in august so that he'll be used to it and will be trained to eat and pee and sleep when he's supposed to. he likes to sleep in, so he'll have to get used to an earlier bedtime and a much earlier waking up time. the only thing that's going to throw that off a little bit is that i have a workshop on june 26-29 but hopefully the schedule is pretty well-ingrained by then.
brynna is talking a lot more...still pretty unclear most of the time...but after getting her test results back and seeing that she actually knows and can do quite a lot, i'm not as worried as i was. she's started to say her abc's so i'm happy...i was a little worried there for a while because caleb picked up the alphabet really quickly and it seemed like she just wasn't learning it at all.
caleb is frickin addicted to games on nickjr.com and though a lot of them actually require him to use his brain and learn some cool things, i'm not so keen on the one that he loves the most, which is just jumping and collecting crap. i'm not a gamer at all, so games in general seem like a big waste of time to me but dave insists that it does help him with eye-hand coordination and problem solving. caleb was getting ridiculous for a while and pitching a huge fit and fighting when it came time to get off the computer but after some good scoldings and spanks, he's learned that when i start the count, he better get his butt off that damn computer.
we took the kids to tash's may day and our school's band concert this past weekend. caleb is a really good audience member...he sits still and watches, enthralled, for pretty much the whole show. brynna is less focused, but she was pretty good too, seeing as how both were at least two hours long.
as the school year comes to an end, i'm actually pretty sad. this is the first year in a while that i really, really, really like my kids. even though i'm at that "little patience for shenanigans, dammit" level at this point, i still know i'm going to be sad to say bye to a lot of these kids. i've been with my avid kids for homeroom, avid and english so i'll really miss them and there are a few others who i'm really going to miss too. i am looking forward to the summer, though, and being able to be home with the kids all day. there's a lot of cleaning that needs to be done (my freakin' floors are horrendous right about now because they haven't been scrubbed down in forever) and a lot of crap that needs to be donated or dumped.
holy smokes, maybe i should write more often so i don't have novel length entries like this one...lol.
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