Training Day - day 2

We are almost at the end of Day 2 of our potty-training boot camp, and so far so good. Lucy has only had 1 accident today, and by the early evening she seemed to finally be getting the connection between feeling the need to go and going.

Yesterday, she was clearly afraid to poop on the potty and she was clearly holding it in for a while there. After I put her in a diaper for bedtime, she ran downstairs to kiss Chris goodnight. He became suspicious when she instead went behind the couch and he asked her what she was doing.

"I think I will make poopie now," she told him.

Today Chris brought home three very cute-looking chocolate candies, to be eaten only once Lucy made "poopie on the potty." Low and behold, about half an hour later, things began to (ahem) move forward.

Lucy was doing so well by this evening that I let her run around outside some and she stayed out there for a solid hour without any accidents! I am hoping that I will be able to relax my vigilance tomorrow (I have literally done nothing all day but track her around the house, and for most of the day we were spending 5 minutes out of every 10 in the bathroom.)

In just a few minutes I will begin the nightime routine, and as long as nothing disastrous happens I will declare this day a victory. I don't want to count my chickens before they are hatched, but so far this has been a relatively painless process. Don't get me wrong, I would still rather do almost anything else other than potty-train, but.... if we can continue on in this vein, it will be entirely liveable. I never thought I'd even be tempted to refer to potty-training in those terms.

We are potty-training today

Gah! I hate this. If I had known that raising children would include having to house-break them, I never would have....

Well, okay, I guess I did know. But if I am honest, my internal dialogue every time I discover that I am pregnant again goes something like this:

We are going to have a baby! Hooray! But, crap, that's one more time I'm going to have to potty-train.

Well, here we go again. Thus far today, Lucy is not taking this very seriously. She thinks it is kind of funny. I am increasingly of the opposite opinion. We'll see who wins this round.

When being cavalier about the weather is a big mistake

The girls had a half-day on Friday, so we decided that it would be fun to walk to the little playground that is about a mile down the road. The neighbor kids showed up and asked if they could come along, so we packed up some water and headed out.

We met another family at the park and had a great time. The kids were all playing well, it was a gorgeous day, and the hours just sped by. Some time around 5, however, the neighbor kids' Grandmother suddenly showed up in her car and informed all of us that a tornado warning had just been issued for our area.

I looked up at the sky, which was darkening in the distance, and the wind was picking up a bit, but it didn't look like anything terribly serious. I mentally dismissed the Grandmother's panic, and declined an offer from my friend to drive us home. The walk to the park had been nice, and I could see no reason why the walk back wouldn't be as enjoyable.

About 2/3 home, however, things suddenly took a very, very bad turn. The sky became purple and the wind began to howl. Rain came from nowhere and literally drenched us all to the skin within a few seconds. The girls were completely panicked. It all happened so fast that I can't remember who was doing what, but somebody took off running in pure fear and it was nearly impossible to shout at her over the wind. I finally gathered everyone around me, and decided to call Chris for rescue and then find a place where we could wait. As I dialed my phone, however, the wind ripped a FOR SALE sign off of the house across the street, and whipped it directly at us. The girls were screaming, and I tried to simultaneously shield Lucy (who was on my back) and deflect the sheet of heavy metal from the girls. Honestly, I can't remember how we avoided getting hit by it -- whether I did something, or whether the wind just diverted it in another direction, but as soon as we were clear from that danger, I shouted for the girls to run with all their might for the Post Office ahead of us.

We made it inside without further incident, all of us soaking wet but otherwise not hurt. The Post Office matron very kindly gave us all towels to dry our faces and after a few minutes Chris showed up to bring us home.

Later that day, Katie - who has been living in Middle Earth for a while now - told me that she no longer feels as eager for adventure as she had been. "Being in danger wasn't exciting at all," she said, "it just felt scary."

The Art of Leisure

On Monday, I clocked in at 4am to the bakery for the last time. On Tuesday, Lucy had her much anticipated, greatly hyped 3rd birthday. On Wednesday, I chaperoned the 5th grade field trip to Philadelphia.

Today, I am doing nothing.

Chris tells me that he has finally solved our picture-uploading problems, so tomorrow I plan to dig out all of those pictures I have been promising to post for the last four months.

Right now, though, I am going to tuck Dicken's Dombey and Son under my arm and go sit outside while the girls play kickball. I'm going to listen to the birds chirp, and feel the warm breeze, and beyond the swing-pushing that I will most likely agree to, I will enjoy this day of not doing a blessed thing.

Expecting

The sound below of laughter boisterous
Together now, then scattered, singular
As the small one creeps up stairs to sidle near,
Too new a branch to burn long unassisted.

The silent fluttering within
Gives the sweetness of her tousled head
Against my arm a kind of salty tang.
She warms with quickened ease now,
A touch, a shift, the blaze renews,
Straining for embers more rarely
The light less borrowed or shared,
Smoldering from fissures unseen.

So soon to be her own and not of mine!
And while this quickening draws,
Stirring and pulling at the frame,
Yet still the yearning it drafts
Clings again to the earlier branch
And is the more consumed.
Too bright for pain, the mesmerizing flames
Mine, less so with every flare.
The searing dear to yield such wonder.

The other "stuff"

The two younger girls and I went to Target this afternoon.

The corner counter top in the kitchen has been bugging me lately, because it tends to be the dumping ground for all sorts of junk. Chris has a habit of scrawling vital and irreplaceable information on little pieces of scrap paper and then dumping them on the pile of junk mail, and after accidentally pitching a few important scrawls I have washed my hands of the pile altogether. This means that the mountain of scrap paper (interspersed with business cards, surgical tidbits, and reciepts) grows and grows and grows....and takes up the entire counterspace. I have tried multiple times to impose order via various wicker baskets, once I even tried a bread drawer, but the pile always ends up overwhelming whatever container I was hoping would...contain the stuff. So naturally I have come to the conclusion that I just need a bigger container.

I was browsing the "storage" section, looking over the baskets and canvas boxes, when Abbie asked what I was looking for. I heard her right away because she tends to speak in an only slightly subdued yell whenever we are in stores.

"I'm just looking for something to put Daddy's stuff in," I said.
"Oh," Abbie responded in her signature screechy-yell, "You mean beer!"

The children's dreams come true

Chris was in the middle of prepping his famous fish and chips for dinner tonight, when there was a disaster with the cod. Don't ask what it was, because now that the girls are reading this blog I have to be careful, and I want them to stay enthusiastic fish lovers. It was bad, though, so although Chris was already halfway done with the french fries he baled on the fish and ordered pizza.

When the girls came up the stairs to discover a dinner of pizza and french fries, they were understandably stoked.

Katie eyed the table in surprise, "Are you sure Easter isn't tonight?" she asked.

Ephiphany in preparation for Easter

This is not nearly as profound as it sounds.

I ran to Target after work today to pick up a few extra things I still needed for Easter Baskets....one of the "extras" being the Easter baskets themselves. Earlier this year, when Chris and I were cleaning out the basement, I threw away all of the old Easter baskets. They were in lousy shape, and I figured that it would be better to just buy new ones.

So, in Target, I made my way to the Easter section and found myself appalled at how expensive those stupid things are. There is no way that I am going to shell out $20 per baskets for the nicer, sturdier ones, but at the same time it felt wrong to spend between $7-12 on the cheap baskets that I know won't last more than a few years.

What to do? Suddenly, it hit me and I made my way to the other side of the store. The purse section. And there, hanging prettily from hooks in a variety of bright colors were the perfect bags - big and roomy, with plenty of space for presents and a deep enough so that they can be tied shut. (The Easter bunny often brings our gifts in themes, and it can be a bummer for some girls to stumble upon someone else's basket and then basically know what their own baskets hold long before finding them.)

These bags are perfect! Easy to store, sturdy, well-made and $10 a piece! Hooray! It felt good to leave the store knowing that I won't be dropping another $60+ in a year or two for new baskets. Plus, when I got home, the girls were just as ecstatic as I knew they'd be; what girl can resist the lure of a cute new purse???

And in light of Katie's post below, for the curious: yes, I did buy six purses. But just in case, the last one was blue.