Potty Training 101

Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes an article about my potty training adventures with Owen. At the writing of the piece, Owen had miraculously potty-trained himself and gone at least a week without accidents. We’ve regressed a bit since then. On one day a couple weeks back, when Owen was constipated and short on sleep, he had six accidents and about sixteen temper tantrums. Luckily that was a blip on the screen but we still have the occasional accident and we’ve begun wearing the thicker training underwear again, since Owen’s initial determination to wear Thomas the Train and Elmo wore off a bit. So Owen often produces a little dime-sized spot of pee on his underwear before he decides to declare that he needs to use the potty. Potty training is inevitably a long journey, even when it goes relatively smoothly. All I know is I’ve given away most of our diapers and put some spares in the closet, and unless we have some visiting guests in need of them, I don’t intend to pull them back out. Because once you get to underwear in my house, there’s no going back.

I’m not providing links to any Web sites this time around, because I decided to stick with the built-in incentives of potty training and follow Owen’s lead – and forget all the tricks and gimmicks this time around. It seemed to work better for us, but of course, it helps to have a big brother around. (We did read Joanna Cole's "My Big Boy Potty" on occasion, though; it's a nice little book.)

If you’ve got potty training tips or stories or online resources to share, please do.

Oxygen please

I have been about as sick this week as I remember being in my life. I’m still not quite sure on the diagnosis – it’s just a month-long cough, fueled by a combination of viruses and allergies, that’s gotten more productive by the day and finally landed me in bed with fevers on and off this week. I’ve been on antibiotics to no avail and am now enduring a 5-day stretch of prednisone, which seems to be helping but also makes me unusually weepy and unusually prone to nighttime mind-racings.

Yesterday I was feeling so much better that I decided to accompany Will on his field trip to the fire station (especially because the prospect of visiting the fire station was making him jittery and he was threatening not to go if I didn’t accompany him).

Today I paid with the fever’s return, but yesterday we had fun.Watched a couple firemen race to get dressed, watched another fireman climb to the talk of the ladder on the ladder truck, saw the firemen’s living and sleeping quarters, tried on firemen’s helmets -- and Owen was overjoyed to use the fire station potty.

Maybe I should have hooked myself up to one of their oxygen tanks. If you’ve got a miracle home remedy for relentless asthma-like bronchitis mixed with sinus infection, please share.

'Never been thinkin’ much ideas'

Sometimes it’s fun to listen to Will share his wisdom about the world with his younger brother. He’ll take a simple message learned from us – that those nighttime leg aches are probably just growing pains, or that avocado is supposed to be good for our brains – and warp the message just enough that it gets more interesting:

After a night when Owen had complained of leg aches, Will told him:

“Those are ache pains. Ache pains make you grow.”

Then at lunch, when Owen declined my offer of avocado on his pita sandwich, Will told him:

“It’s good for your brain. Why you’ve never been thinking much ideas is because you never have avocado.”

What little pearls of wisdom have your children shared with you lately?

Collecting pennies for peace

After a two-week Pennies for Peace fundraising drive at our preschool, Owen and Will and I pulled a wagon filled with a big, heavy jug full of coins into CB&T on Friday. We had a great time dumping the coins into the coin machine and watching as it calculated the money. We collected 6,769 pennies and about 1,200 other coins for a grand total of $300.29 – our modest contribution to help build schools in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

We read “Listen to the Wind” (Greg Mortenson's story of his first school-building experience in Pakistan) to our 3-year-old and pre-k classes and had fun sorting and counting change in the classroom. If you’ve got a tiny bit of spare time on your hands and the inclination to help your child’s school (or even just your family) launch a little Pennies to Peace drive, check out the web site. They make it simple and provide lots of online learning material.

Field dog

Photos to accompany Wednesday's post. We're all feeling better about Harvey's new life as work dog, rather than pent-up backyard puppy.

He wishes he could drive the jeep though.

The return of Harvey

So I haven’t been speaking of our now 8-month-old hyper lab-spaniel puppy Harvey much on the blog of late – and that is in part because his fate with our family was in limbo for a bit. Rob’s dad was gracious enough to watch him for a full month -- from Christmas break well into January -- and he even toyed with the idea of keeping him since I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by our big-dog-little-kids combo.

During my time away from Harvey, I began to feel such peace with our family life without a dog added to the mix – especially a dog that couldn’t safely co-exist with the kids and thus spent much of his time banned from the house and feasting on our deck as a way to deal with his puppy frustrations. I was wracked with guilt and short on sleep.

So when Harvey returned, it felt like an ominous thing to me – a weight returning to me as much as my sweet puppy coming home. But Rob is determined to make a good life for us and our dog, and so far we are all doing amazingly well together. Rob is working double time to make sure that my days and my domestic chores aren’t lengthened by Harvey being here. It’s field season for Rob at work, so he’s bringing Harvey with him to work most days, where he gets to ride around in a jeep and frolic in the woods while Rob collects data. Harvey comes home worn out and happy to lay on our deck.

The boys are still nervous about Harvey – and rightfully so. He’s not aggressive but he’s big and he plays hard and he’ll knock over an adult in a heartbeat. And that still makes me a bit uneasy, but I just keep the boys and Harvey in separate spaces unless Rob's here to help me manage safety issues.

The boys were watching the tail end of the PBS show “Martha Speaks,” the other day and it included a little video segment with a girl playing with a puppy as she spoke these words to end the show: “The best part of having a puppy is you have someone to play with.”

I sighed to myself, looked at Will and Owen, and said, “Should we go play with our puppy?”

“Maybe when I’m 15,” Will said. “He’s kind of big.”

But Will is enjoying throwing tennis balls to Harvey, under close supervision from us, and this weekend when we took Harvey on the leash, Owen in a stroller, and Will on his bike to the far end of Lakebottom park, Harvey came to the rescue. It was a longer ride than we’d ever asked of Will and the last uphill leg of the return trip had him worn out. So, in spite of my initially nervous protests, Rob tied Harvey’s leash to Will’s bike and then held it himself with the fierce grip of a father determined to keep his son safe. And Harvey became a work dog, pulling our tired boy home on his bike. The next day we tied him to the front of the double stroller and let him pull the boys home a bit that way. And while I would never recommend these nutty tactics to anyone, I somehow trust Rob to carry them out safely – and the boys are thrilled by Harvey, the sled dog. Harvey seems to love the role too.

As we ate dinner the day of that too-long bike ride, Will asked us: “You know what one of the funnest things in my life happened today?”

“What?” we asked him.

“Riding my bike with Harvey.”

Strange lunch ideas, from the kids

I pack the strangest things in Will's lunch these days. He begs often for lunchables and I explain to him that I think it's too much packaging to throw out for just a few crackers and (processed) cheese and lunch meat. But I do try to respect his wishes, within the limits of our kitchen cupboards, when it comes to packing his lunch and we wind up with kind of strange sandwich fixings. One of his favorites is melted cheese and deli turkey (we get that natural nitrate-free stuff) on pita bread with salsa, sour cream and avocado. It's kind of a strange combo, invented by him, but I'll admit I kind of like it myself.

Last week, though, when he begged for a peanut butter, jelly and cheddar cheese sandwich, I was feeling skeptical. But since he was certain he would like it and he's been not too excited about plain PB&J's lately, I decided to give it a go.

"How'd you like your sandwich?" I asked him after school.

"Delish!" he said with a smile. Next time he wants me to throw in some raisins.

For snack today, he crumbled crackers into cottage cheese, added a dollop of salsa and declared it delectable.

As long as it's relatively healthy and gets eaten, I guess I'm just going to let him keep concocting strange foods.

What secrets do you have for keeping your kids lunching without lunchables at school? Or are you a lunchable lover?