Maybe TMI...

If you don't care for talk of potty training or nosebleeds, just look at the picture and skip all the words. :-)

It is official - Bubba is potty trained! We talked about summer goals as a family a few weeks ago, and wearing underwear was one of his goals. I put him in underwear almost three weeks ago, set the timer on my watch to beep every twenty minutes and sat him on his little potty seat. I couldn't use that method with Cakes. If I ever used the "just try" routine with her she had a major meltdown. Bubba is very laid back though; I knew he would just go with it. I also knew he would happily stay in diapers forever if I wasn't a little more proactive.

His incentive was his very own scooter; inspired by him having a meltdown one afternoon over Silly riding his own scooter when Bubba wanted a turn. I told him that as soon as he wears underwear all the time and goes on the potty, he can get his own scooter and not have to share Silly's anymore. He requested green, which meant we had to order it, so it sat in my closet for about three weeks. He took to peeing on his little training potty right away, but it wasn't until today that he finally pooped on his potty. I was really talking up the scooter all weekend. I even took him in my closet a few times and showed him the box, telling him his scooter was tired of being in there and really wanted to come out and play with him. Seems to have done the trick. Just before we left to take him to the doctor this afternoon he pooped in his potty. Silly and I made a huge deal out of it and immediately got his scooter out and he took it for a little ride. Woohoo!

We were going to the doctor because he started having nosebleeds after we moved. He had one about a month ago, one last week and three over the weekend, one of which was of the wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-find-you're-bleeding type. (Am I the only one familiar with that experience?) The others were all pretty minor but that one took a good long time to stop bleeding. I was sitting there on his floor, holding him in my lap, pinching his nose as he's bleeding but really wanting to be sleeping, remembering the times I woke up with a bloody nose as a kid, waking my mom up, rinsing my pillowcase in cold water in the sink. I remember my mom bought me a new pillow once, and I'm pretty sure I had a nosebleed the very first night I slept on it. Mom and I both had bloody noses as kids. Dad says we had a weak blood vessel. Anyway, I took Bubba to the doctor just to rule anything out. She said his nose was a little bit inflamed, so maybe give him some Zyrtek every day for a week and see if that doesn't help, but there wasn't anything to worry about unless he has one that lasts more than 30 minutes, has more than one in 24-hours or has other indicators of a bleeding problem like bruising or a rash. I put a little towel by his pillow and when I was putting him to bed last night he said, "This is for my blood." Yep. One more trait that makes him more my kid than Scott's (yes - I keep track because Cakes is just the girl version of Scott and Silly is the blonde, dimpled version).

10 on 10!

I stole this 10 on 10 idea from my friend Carrie over at The Boonie Life. I've known her since second grade, and now we both have kids that are past that age. Yikes! So, ten photos of my day, in order:

Kids playing games, still in their pjs (Silly has been sleeping in his clothes lately...)

Found this cleaning up Bubba's disaster of a bedroom

Cleaned my room

Silly and Bubba playing with the parachute in Bubba's very short lived clean room



Took a chance on the weather and went to our friend's house to swim, ended up swimming in the rain for a bit but then it really started to pour. Pre-rain, Silly jumped off the diving board without his floatie vest for the first time! All that swimming in the ocean convinced him that he can actually swim.

Stopped on the way home to watch and take pictures (bad pictures) of the snapping turtle who crossed the road then swam down the gully.

Made dinner, tried something new, it was good, but not thrilling

Went to the fabric store, trying to decide if this is too outrageous for my kitchen...all the "kitchen" curtains I've seen are completely atrocious and never left the 80s

Bought this, that I'm completely in love with, for my dining room curtains, and it's a good thing I love it because I bought 12 YARDS of it! Scott says I should've just bought $15 curtains from Walmart. No thanks. Those curtains will have to wait on some assistance from my mother. :-)

And I bought this for a bathroom window curtain. Pictures do absolutely no justice to fabric colors.

Lazy Summer

We have pretty much thrown schedules and routines out the window this summer. We don't have any trips planned. I didn't sign anybody up for any summer camps. Swim lessons is about as exciting as it's going to get around here and those finished up yesterday. It's possible that we finally convinced Cakes to try out for the swim team. I contacted the coach to find out what the requirements are - one length of freestyle and one length of backstroke. No sweat for her!

But this morning we had some actual fun and hit the beach! Bubba went from crying through half of his swim lessons to letting me or Scott just carry him right out into the ocean and bounce along with the waves. Goofy kid. The ocean is fine, but his cute swim teacher is terrifying?

Silly is the king of wipe outs. He never quite got the timing right for jumping over the waves. He would jump too early, which meant his feet were off the ground already when the wave crested so he just got swept away every single time. When I made him take a water break he told me, "But I already drank lots of water," meaning from the ocean. Not exactly what I had in mind. Then when we were getting ready to go, as he was rinsing off at the outdoor shower he starts yelling, "My body hurts!" At first I thought he was getting a cramp somewhere, but then he pulled up his swim shirt and showed me he was all scratched up from the sand.

Cakes was her usual having fun, making friends self. She had two little followers by the time we left. Give that girl a few minutes with a kid anywhere near her age and she'll have a new friend. We don't know where she gets that from, because it sure wasn't from either one of us, at least not something we were capable of as kids. She barely left the water the whole time we were there, pretty much once for a snack and water break, and once for more sunscreen.

Bubba had one good wipe out too. We went down to the water to rinse off and while I was looking down at the water a wave crashed, knocking him down and taking him under. I screamed, even though I know it is pretty much only people who swim where they shouldn't swim who drown at the ocean, not kids who wipe out on the shore. Still not pleasant to see your three year old disappear under the water for any amount of time!

And no trip to the beach with Scott would be complete without him digging a hole to make a little pool.

 

 

He even enjoyed it himself for a little while. I was cracking up laughing at him when he got out of his little seat because the mesh lining of his swim-short legs had filled with sand while he sat there. I don't know how he managed to walk in them and keep them on, they were so heavy. Nothing that couldn't be fixed by getting back in the water though. He cracked me up when we got home too. I told everyone to eat a banana before we left this morning; he took his to the beach for some odd reason, ate it, then stuck the peal in my bag (which is now in the washing machine). When we got home, I went to open the trunk and there was his banana peel on our bumper, where it sat the whole way home. I thought it had just fallen out when he put the bag in the trunk, but apparently he put it there hoping it might blow off on the way home. Goofball.

Swimming

I told Bubba a long time ago, way before his birthday, that when he turned three he could take swim lessons with Cakes and Silly. Not long after his birthday he reminded me that he was now big enough for swim lessons. They started Monday and this is how he did:

 

He pretty much cried his head off the whole time. When he wasn't crying he insisted on sitting on the steps, far away from his class, and I had to keep my chair right next to him. There were a bunch of other moms around who kept reassuring me that their child had once done the same thing, as if I seemed very concerned and had never had that kind of experience before. I found their concern rather amusing.

The rest of Monday we kept talking to him about swim lessons and he would tell us, "I not scared anymore." He did much better on Tuesday. He didn't speak to his teacher at all, wouldn't make any eye contact at all, but that isn't unusual for him. He takes a long, long time to warm up to new people. He was in nursery for over a year before his teachers even knew he could talk.

Cakes is her usual super swimmer self. She has ended up with the same swim teacher, Mr. Tyler, more often than not since she started taking lessons at 3 years old. The girl really needs to move up to the swim team but we just can't talk her into it. She loves to swim, she's really good at it, she wants to get better, she wants to swim more, all of which she could do on the swim team, but she's terrified of the whole competition aspect. There's a fine line between encouraging her and pushing her to do better or pushing her over the edge and turning something she loves into something she hates. Baby steps.

Silly is his usual happy, goofy little self. It cracks me up that he is such a good floater. I don't know why I find that amusing, but the kid can float indefinitely. His arm movement for the backstroke needs some serious work though. I wish I had my camera that day. The boy honestly has no idea that his arm is actually capapble of rotating all the way around at his shoulder. Something to work on.

In other news, I think I have found the magical incentive to convince Bubba to use the potty - his own scooter. He is always stealing Silly's scooter, and is actually quite good at it. He was having a meltdown one morning because Silly was riding "his" scooter. I told him that when he uses the potty and wears underwear he can get his very own and then he won't have to share with Silly anymore. He thinks it's a great idea, but we've only convinced him to use the potty once since then. Every time I ask him he says, "No. Not yet." It's gonna take a long time to fill that sticker chart!