DragonBlog

Preschool!!!

So much has been going on lately. I've actually had tons of things I've wanted to rant blog about, but haven't had the time to really log in and take care of it. Last weekend we managed to get outside and take care of some gardening. Yesterday, I planted tomato plants out there. Jareth can't wait for the tomatoes to grow! Last weekend we also went to a party where I got to see a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in a little over ten years! Wow, so much has changed, and yet there are still some things that stay the same...Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

I used to be more social, for one. Lately, I've noticed my social skills just seem to be... inadequate from my perspective. I'll leave a place and five minutes later be asking myself why I didn't say something about a topic or why I forgot to ask someone a question I'd been meaning to... the list is endless. I used to be less socially awkward, but now I find I'm quiet until someone asks me a question, and then I ramble instead of making the point that I most want to make. It's frustrating.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Then again, the party last weekend was one of the rare times when I felt that comfortable. The presence of old friends was like putting on that old favorite sweater when you find it at the back of the closet. And the new people I met fit into the folds so well that it just fit so well... Ahhh. Like a little boost to remind me that I'm not a social misfit after all. heh. We had fun at the party. Brian, the kids, and me.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

However, the real reason I picked today to blog was that tomorrow - my little guy starts preschool!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Holy crud he's gotten so big already!!!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

So tomorrow, at an ungodly (for me anyway) hour in the morning, I will hoist him out of bed and take him to preschool for the first time. I'll drop him off and drive away.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Hoo boy. That's gonna be a toughie. I had a hard enough time leaving my kids 10 minutes away in a day care for 3 hours while I went to a class that kept me adequately distracted. At least I'll have Kayla to keep me distracted. But it will be for 4 hours and he'll be about a half an hour away...Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

And yet, I think this is going to be totally good for him. And I'm thoroughly excited. And proud. My little guy is both potty-trained AND about to go to preschool! Wow. Wow-wow-wow!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

*shakes head in disbelief*Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

It's all going by me so quickly!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Oh - and pics are coming soon. I just haven't had time to get to them yet.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Current Mood: impressed Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

And They All Came Tumbling Down...

The 12th was my birthday. Yeah, I kinda figured I'd be blogging that day or the day after it, but things have been... not as good as one might hope.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

The birthday itself was great though! Brian took a vacation day and took me to the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art in the morning. I now have sculpting on the brain and a couple of pieces of soapstone and a tagua nut to mess around with. And a book on lapidary, along with a couple of other, smaller books - one on gemstone care and the other on carving soapstone specifically. I also picked up a tagua nut ring. Kinda like ivory, but really a nut, and referred to by many as "vegetable ivory". I have since learned that buttons used to be made out of the stuff until cheap plastics came along. Interesting. I'm curious to see how it carves. Once I get a chance to make a mess doing it. I may also wait until I get a couple of other tools. We'll see. I'm slowly collecting a smidge of cash in my PayPal account for tools, since it seems the only way I can keep money separate and have it not end up in the "pay bills" pile. Eventually it will amount to something I can buy stuff with. lol. Some of my own income from web design is getting dropped in there right now and if I sell anything on eBay it ends up in there too. I need to gather up some stuff for eBay and get it up there!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

After the museum, we headed out to Glen Ellyn, where I grew up, and hit my favorite burger joint for lunch. Amazingly enough, the kids were GOOD while there too - even though Kayla was super hungry by that point and I expected to have to nurse her there at the booth. Instead, she was content munching on some Gerber cereal, and some dried fruit tidbits and waited to nurse once we were home. We stopped off at the Flour Barrel bakery (couldn't find a link for them) in Glen Ellyn next, where we bought a box 'o cookies (that didn't last the day) and the cake that Brian had ordered for me. This is where my mom sometimes bought cakes for me when I was a kid - angel food cake with buttercream frosting. And yes - it was as good as I remembered. Brian totally got brownie points for ordering me one this year! Yummmmmm! We managed to make the cake last a few days longer than the cookies did at least.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Then it was back home so the kids could nap and we could lounge about. Since we'd had lunch out I decided we'd order in for dinner and after finding out the Mixican place that had brought us food once before didn't deliver to our area (they said the owner had been bored the other time), we ended up ordering Chinese instead. It was a nice relaxing evening and a great day overall.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

But then... there's the other crap.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Yesterday, for example, I went in for my first allergy shots. Now, there has been so much stress lately that I've been clinging to that one hope that I'm at least on the path towards feeling better physically that when the nurse told me they FORGOT TO BRING MY SHOT TO THAT OFFICE...Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

It was not a shining moment for me. I rescheduled for NEXT Monday instead and barely made it to the elevator before bursting into tears. Last straw syndrome.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

The other stuff - the stuff that has my head in stabbing pain and my stomach feeling so sick I could easily throw up - I can't talk about here. Because it's looking more and more like it's going to involved lawyers. And because it does involve family. MY family, not Brian's. Brian is trying to buffer me and keep me from having a total meltdown at this point. If it weren't for him and my two beautiful children... Well, let's just say I'm not in a good space right now. At a point when things were beginning to look like they were about to improve, I'm being slapped in the face once again, called a liar, and emotionally stabbed in the back. I'm reeling, as all I did to "deserve" this was be more generous and helpful than I was required to be. I'd managed not to actually cry until the allergy thing tipped me over the edge for the moment. Now I'm back on the ledge again, clinging to the threads that are my husband and children. There's a whole lot of snuggling and hugging going on in this house these days. The kids can tell something's wrong too. I hate that most of all. They should not have to see me so close to just shutting down.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Being busy is helping a little. We're getting quotes on some of the repair work that needs to be done to our house. I think we have enough scraped together to do the first one - paint the outside house trim and take care of the gutters. We have to do that one first or the village is going to fine us for some of the peeling paint. I'm annoyed about that. I want my damned family room back downstairs so we can stop being crunched into the living room. There's piles of stuff everywhere and my kids have no place to play. It's not helping my stress levels whatsoever.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

I want to cry, I want to cry, I want to cry... But I want my kids to see me coping, at the very least.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

I am leaping from one "good" moment to the next, trying to forget the ones in between while I'm at the actual good ones. There was a wonderful energy at a drum circle we went to last weekend that I hoped had rejuvinated me again. A surge of good karma that only took 24 hours to batter down again.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Learn. Grow. Be. - I keep reminding myself it's all part of the experience.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

*sigh*Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

If my posts become infrequent, forgive me. Sometimes, when I only have bad stuff I want to vent out, I tend to fall silent instead. I will, however, try to keep the pictures coming for the family members checking in. I have some new ones from the park yesterday that I need to put up. I'll hopefully get them up soon.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Current Mood: stressed Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Potty Training My Little Guy

As Brian mentioned on his blog, we've begun the potty training "push" around here. I searched and searched and found a book that got rave reviews and talked about potty training in just ONE day. Since he's ready to start preschool, his diapers have been the only thing holding him back. Telling him that didn't seem to help. Nothing I'd tried seemed to be working. Even the day I spent with him in underwear and me running all over the house cleaning up puddles of urine. So the book was ordered, shipped, and arrived in short order.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Then I attempted to read the damned thing.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Ever since my head injury in 2001, I've noticed my capacity for textbook learning is atrocious. Bad. Abysmal. After several months passed and I hadn't gotten past the second chapter (and it wasn't technically that hard of a read) between the lack of time to read and my inability to just quickly digest the information I finally bailed and handed the book over to Brian.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

He, of course, read it in about two days.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Then he explained it to me, which made my life a zillion times easier, and we began planning for the potty "party" and our big "push" to get him out of diapers and over that milestone hurdle.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Since Brian had been the one to read the book and the day needed to have a) no interruptions (meaning Kayla) and b) be really special to Jareth, I got the proverbial boot out of the house on party day. Since Jareth doesn't get nearly enough one-on-one time with his daddy, I took Kayla and ran errands and drove around for the better part of the day while they did the whole "training" thing. I also hit a library with a play area to let poor Kayla out to crawl for a while. She's recently taken a dislike to being put in her car seat (she doesn't seem to mind it once she's IN there, just the getting in part!) so she was pretty royally pissed at me for putting her in it over and over again throughout the day. We came back around dinner time - Jareth even picked out what we were having, since I had some of his favorites in stock in the freezer. Then I got to join in on the watching of videos and encouragement as he kept "practicing" on the potty and having the occasional accident throughout the evening.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

That first day with Brian, he crossed some major hurdles. For one, he'd never actually done anything successfully on the potty prior to that. He still had quite a few accidents, and went through quite a few pairs of his new underwear, but he was starting to understand what to do. Partly, training the doll helped him get it. Partly, the one-on-one with Brian gave him the opportunity to focus on it. He also likes to show off for Brian more. He'll behave for me more, but likes to show off for his daddy. That's what I get for being "bad cop" all the time. lol.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Sunday we had to continue the process. Originally there had been plans to help Lindsay (Brian's sister) and Scott move. However, their new dog was going to cause a logistics problem with us bringing the kids and Jareth wasn't ready to be separated from Brian yet. In the end, Brian had to back out and stay home so that we could continue what had been started. We kept going, with the movies, the books, the stickers, the treats, and all the other scheduled things to mark his successes. We also went out briefly and bought him a new potty, since the one we had was crap. The "boy shield" part kept falling off into it, which made him have this panicked "Uh-oh! Help!" every time. So, we upgraded from this one to this one. I also picked up this one for when we're on the road. Fortunately, I'd had a gift certificate left from someone that I was able to cut down the costs with too. He LOVES the new potty in the bathroom, and I think I'm going to be very happy with the travel one too.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Yesterday Brian went back to work and I was on my own. We'd made HUGE progress on Sunday, both diminishing the accidents throughout the day and also "weaning" him back off the reliance he'd built up on Brian being in the bathroom with him every single time Jareth wanted to go in there. Half of the excitement had been about the time spent with daddy. Now we'd weaned it off so that he understood that it could be just as fun with me there. Monday was the push to get him to be more independent. By noon on Monday, I had it so that he'd gone to the bathroom, wiped, emptied the potty into the big toilet, flushed, AND washed and dried his hands - ALL without my direct supervision.Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Last night, we also got him to understand that he's allowed to come out of his room at night to go on the potty. Despite the fact that he did that about six times before he finally went to bed, he woke up DRY this morning as a result. In fact, we've had NO accidents for the first half of the day today. At the moment, he seems to have to pee every 10 minutes on average, and spends about half the day in the bathroom, BUT he is DRY! Eventually, as I wean down the stickers and treats to more occasionally, he's going to figure out that the bathroom isn't ACTUALLY the funnest place in the house to spend half your time...Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

I'm hoping today that he'll go in there for his poop though. That was the prime accident during the day yesterday. I've heard that that one takes a little longer. He's doing so well as it is though! While it's been exhausting on Brian and I, it hasn't had him in tears 99% of the time! I'm SO pleased!Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Wow... my little boy is growing up!! Next thing I know I'll be dropping him off at preschool... Whoa...Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download

Current Mood: impressed Fruity Loop 4.5.2 Download