Adventures In Potty Training

Yes, I know. The Boy is WAY too old to not be potty trained yet. I get it. That's why I haven't talked about it here before. Truth be told, I am a little embarrassed by this fact. It was one of the three goals I had before the baby was born. The other two being getting rid of his Binky (check) and moving him into a big boy bed (check again). Two out of three ain't bad.

But then he started stuttering. And all his doctors told me that I should not put any pressure on him at all. Then I went on bed rest. Then the stuttering got worse. Then I gave birth and brought a new sibling into the house. Excuses, excuses, I know. But seriously. The kid is three and a half. It is time.

So even though I have only been back working for two weeks, and even though I don't think it is possible for me to be more tired than I am right now...I decided it was time. This was the weekend. It needed to happen...

Okay if I am being totally honest, my ass got a kick start because last weekend all 6 grandkids got together at my Dad and stepmother's house and every single kid there was potty trained. Except for my kids. My daughter? She gets a pass; she's not even four months old. But when my niece and nephew both showed up in "big girl/boy pants" I knew I needed to make this happen. They are both a full year younger than my son. Ouch. Call it peer pressure, whatever, but it is time...

So I decided that we were going to stay home all weekend long and give it a shot. Today was the first day. The method I am using is to have the boy run around the house naked from the waist down (if he has any pants on at all, he just goes. He doesn't get the concept yet that some things are different from a diaper) and set the timer to go off every thirty minutes. Every time the timer goes off we sit on the potty and give it a shot. Sometimes we had no success at all. Sometimes we had a couple of drops, and twice we had full-on, real pee in the potty. Overall I think it was a pretty good day.

Here's the bad part.

I had just come from the doctor (damned clogged milk duct!!) and The Boy was just waking up from his nap. I took off his pull-up, set the timer and we went to try and use the potty. I don't think anything happened that time. I went and got him a big glass of water in his favorite cup to encourage drinking and therefore successful peeing. I was out in the kitchen on the phone when he came out and said, "Mommy, I spill my water."

"You spilled your cup honey? All of it?"

"No Mommy...just little bit. You clean it up?"

Now I know you are all thinking that it wasn't really water and that he had peed all over his room. You would be wrong...it WAS water...

And it was just a little bit of water. He pointed it out to me and it looked like the cup had fallen over for a minute and spilled a little but he had picked it up before much damage was done. So I was wiping up the water off the floor when he said...

"Mommy, while you cleaning dat, you clean da poop poop off my foot?"

!!!!!!!!!!

So yes, my son was kind enough to point out to me the small puddle of water on the floor, but he neglected to tell me about THE SHIT on the floor. Great. Looked like he had attempted a toot but got a little more than he bargained for. Of course I don't want to make him feel bad or freak out or anything so I tell him no big deal and to go and sit on the potty and see if he can finish. Meanwhile I get the wipes out and clean off his foot, the toilet seat, the bean bag chair, the floor, the step stool to get to the toilet...you get the idea. It was at this time that I hear my precious little daughter in the living room just BLOW ONE. Like a huge poop. And I just knew...

So I left The Boy with a book on the potty and went out to the living room to find The Girl laying in shit. It had gone all the way up her back, all over her outfit and all over the blanket she was laying on. But she was smiling about it. Of course she was. So I pick her nastiness up and take her to her room to clean her up but of course the wipes are in the bathroom with The Boy so I am holding her again to go and fetch the wipes and in the process get shit all over my shirt and my arms. I Fetch the wipes and take her back to her room, clean her up, get a new outfit and while I am standing there stripping my own shirt off I set her down in her crib and go into my room to find a new shirt.

This is where you think I am making this up because it seems just a little too much...but I assure you. I am not making this up. I wish I were.

And as I cross the threshold into my room I stepped in a nice, warm, chunky pile of cat barf.

Seriously.

And that about wraps my day up. Hope yours was better.

Oh Yeah...THIS!!

I have a clogged milk duct.

OUCH!!!

I had forgotten about this lovely part of breast feeding. I assumed I was good this time because my baby is actually eating off the breast (as opposed to last time when I exclusively pumped and got clogged milk ducts constantly) and so far I had been good. No longer...

I am not sure if it is the fact that my baby went 8 1/2 hours last night, or that I am unbelievably stressed, or what. But I need to get this thing resolved before it turns into the dreaded mastitis.

So I am doing all the tricks that I read about on the internet last night at 3:45 during one of my many pumping sessions. I am:

• Nursing, nursing, and nursing some more
• Always starting The Girl out on the side with the clogged duct and then moving her to the other side to hopefully fulfill her (does this mess with the supply of the "good" boob?)
• Pumping after each time she eats on the evil side
• Massaging the hell out of the hard lump that used to be my soft breast
• Warm compresses
• Trying different positions including the one where my baby's chin faces toward the clogged area (she looked at me in the middle of the night like I was nuts when I was crouched over her on all fours and then when I turned her upside down and she was facing my stomach and kicking my face...)
• Hot, hot shower followed by immediate pumping and massaging of the area while doing this
• Obviously not going more than 2 or 3 hours without her nursing or pumping on this side

So tell me great internet...is there anything that I am missing? Do you have anything else that worked for you? I am also only sending her to daycare today for the couple of hours that I am actually meeting with clients. I am picking her up around lunchtime and keeping her with me for the rest of the day so she can actually nurse as opposed to pumping like I normally would on a Thursday. So with all of that...anything else? Can you help me?

The Current State of Affairs

I've been a bag blogger lately. I am still trying to figure out my new world. Who knew it could be this hard to work over 8 hours a day, take care of two kids, and never sleep more than 4 hours at a time? Each day I am shocked at the fact that I am simply exhausted. I spend about 10 minutes thinking, why the hell am I so tired? And then I remember.

Overall things really are going well. I am somewhat glad to be getting back to work and catching up with my clients. The baby is doing great in daycare. Pumping/breast feeding is still going well. The Boy is fine, although he is being a typical 3 1/2 year old and testing me on EVERYTHING. That is another post in and of itself. But overall things are okay; I am just trying to get into the swing of my new life post baby. Remember back 5 months ago when I got put on bed rest and I lamented here on this very blog that I hated change? Yeah, well I do. And getting back to my "old life" post baby has proven to be just as hard and giving it up way back when.

Random thought. How much does it suck when your baby sleeps 8 1/2 hours in her crib for the very first time and you don't get to enjoy it? I put the baby down at 8:30 last night. I slept blissfully from about 10:00 until around 2:30 when I mentally did the hour count in my head (5 1/2 hours...pretty good...should be up any minute now for a feeding) and then tried to go back to sleep. Except from 2:30 until 5:00am (when she finally woke up!!) I barely slept and had weird dreams and in each dream I kept telling people, "Oh my God, the baby slept X amount of hours last night!" All the while she actually is still asleep and I am tossing and turning and basically NOT enjoying it because I am laying there expecting her to wake up at any given second. Then as I roll over onto one side I realize that my boobs also are aware of the fact that she has been asleep so long. So I mentally lay there and think about how much it sucks that after she gets up and eats that I am going to have to go pump. And oh please oh please let me be able to fall back asleep after pumping, and please don't let The Boy wake up when I have to go into the kitchen to pump...I need at least another hour and a half out of him before I am ready to start the day...

Do you see what a waste of perfectly good sleep that is?

These are my thoughts at 5:24am when I sit here at my desk pumping. I really need to get my shit together and give you all a proper blog post. But for right now? This is as good as it's going to get. Hope all is well with all of you. Normal blogging will resume shortly. (I hope).

You You You Like Bugs?

This is a sentence that you are asked within 5 minutes of meeting my son. It is usually followed up by wondering if you have a particular hankering for spiders or...if you want to make him jump out of his pants with joy...spider webs (the end all, be all of excitement as far as he is concerned).

Due to his new (although not too new at this point) interest, his lovely Gigi, whose entire purpose in life is to put a smile on the small child, went out and found a book all about bugs. And that book came with a lovely cylindrical plastic thing with several very real-looking plastic bugs inside of it. The Boy LOVES them. And one of his most favorite things in the world to do is to hide them all over the house and laugh maniacally when I scream because I have found said bugs. This morning while The Girl and I enjoyed lounging in bed for a while on Saturday morning, The Boy was busy at work. I knew I was in trouble when I finally got up to have him say to me, "Mommy der some bugs waiting for you." Great. What a wonderful way to start a morning. So I decided to take my camera with me and show you the treats that are left around my house on a regular basis.

Behold the keyboard. How ironic that I had already decided to make a blog post out of this and when I went to retrieve my camera out of my desk drawer this is the first bug that I was lucky enough to find:

He kept giving me hints that the spiders wanted to be in the leaves this morning (nice "hint" Boy) so I checked all of my house plants to find this one:
Then he proceeded to tell me that he KNOWS his sister really likes bugs. So I started checking her stuff out. Here is her bouncy seat. I believe that is a dragon fly...
And finally, his hairy spider (as he calls it) resting comfortably in her crib...
There were many more hidden but not all of them warranted photos. But just know that there are 20 bugs in that container and he "hid" about 15 of them this morning. At least he warned me this time. Most of the time I will be going around doing my normal stuff, minding my own business, and I run into one of these little suckers. And I have to admit that if I didn't know he put it there originally sometimes he succeeds in scaring the living shit out of me.

Happy Saturday everyone. May your weekend be bug free!

And So It Begins...

The Boy just called me into his room (he went to bed about a half an hour ago).

He looked at me when I went in and said, "Mommy, I found TWO boogies in my nose. One on each side!!"

"Great," I replied. "I will go and get you a tissue."

Boy: "No, don't worry. I put a dem in my mouf."

Mommy: "You put them in your mouth?!?!?!"

Boy: "Uh huh. Yes."

Mommy: "And you ate them?"

Boy: "Uh huh. Yes. Dey yummy. Dey almost as good as my licorice."

Oh dear God, he is eating his boogers. I officially have a nasty little boy. Sigh...

Getting Better

Sorry that my last post was such a downer. I considered taking it down several times but have decided to leave it up there because it is an accurate depiction of what is going on in my life right now. But man, it is hard to put your troubles up for the entire world to see. It is hard enough looking at them by yourself but allowing other people to see into the truth of the matter? Tough. But like I have always said, this blog is about my truth. And my truth isn't all about how damn cute my children are.

That being said...I am feeling a little bit better. The hardest day of the month for me is always the first of the month when I have to pay my mortgage. I freak out and realize that I am not going to make it, cry and scream and yell, and then (for the last few months) borrow money from my parents to make it for another month and then slowly collect myself. What I am doing different this month is that rather than taking their money and putting my head back in the sand for another month (because I am on bed rest and can't worry about it right now...or because I am home with my new baby and I have to focus on that damnit...or because it just isn't fair...blah, blah, blah) is that I am making a plan. I actually printed out my profit and loss for the past few months and made a spreadsheet of exactly what it would cost for me to stay in this house if I cut out all the fun extras (and by fun extras I mean my cleaning lady and my HBO and Showtime, oh and my son's speech therapy...). Then I divided that number by my hourly wage to see how many hours I would have to bill in order to come up with that number. It is doable. Not fun...but doable. So right now I am making sure that I am billing 8 hours a day and am also actively looking for new clients. If I can stay this course then I should be okay. So that is where I stand as of today.

In other news, my baby is in daycare!!! How sad am I? Poor little Peanut. Although she loves it. She is a hit. And apparently a very well behaved baby. The pump and I are getting along okay for the time being, but I am not thrilled with it. But the alternative is unacceptable. Right now she is eating about 8 ounces a day while she is at daycare and I am pumping about 10 ounces while she is gone. So we are still good on the supply. Of course this is just the first week so we will have to see how that goes. Plus, I am only sending her to daycare three days a week (she is home with me on Wednesdays and Fridays) so hopefully her actually eating from my breast on the other 4 days a week will help to keep the supply up.

I noticed how much I missed her this week so far. With an older one at home who is a lot more demanding it is easy to go most of the day without even interacting with her at all. This makes me horribly sad. In fact both Monday and Tuesday nights I found myself putting her to sleep in her crib during the night because I know it means she will be up every three hours. I missed her. I actually didn't want her to sleep for 8 hours (like she will if I put her in the swing). So since I can't nurse her during the day, or really spend any quality time with her during the day I am trying to make up for it at night. Really this just serves to make me exhausted since she doesn't even wake up in the middle of the night. She just screams until a boob is put into her mouth and she sucks until she feels full, then pulls off and resumes sleeping. But hey, it is "quality" time with mah baybee...

We are slowly getting into the groove over here. We are finally trying to return to a sense of what normal used to look like. Both kids in daycare, Mommy working full time and being able to pay the bills. I will be thrilled when we finally find a routine that works for us. Right now we are still messing with it trying to come up with what works best. But at the end of the day I now have two beautiful children to come home to and that is more than I could have ever wished for. So even though things are stressful, they really couldn't get much better.

The Jig Is Up

Today marks the first day of my returning to work full time and The Girl's first full week at daycare. It has been a long time coming. I went off of work on February 20th when I was just 29 weeks pregnant. That's over 5 months that life has been in chaos. In some ways it will be good to get back into a routine. But in other ways...well, it's not so good.

I can no longer bury my head in the sand about my future where finances are concerned. It is time to really figure out if I am able to make enough money on my own to stay in my house. And in all probability, I can't. And this makes me more sad than I could ever express on this page. When we bought this house it was, of course, when we were a two-income family. That is no longer the case. It is very unlikely that, as a single woman living alone with two kids, I will be able to afford to stay where I am.

I reside in one of the most expensive places to live in the entire United States. And I don't live here because I want to be able to carry that "prestigious" title. I have lived here my whole life. It is all I have ever known. I have a TON of extended family that all lives here. Except for one of my cousin's family, every single cousin, Aunt/Uncle, Grandparent, sister, brother...EVERYONE lives within a 20 minute drive from my house. And because of that, my kids are growing up with all of their cousins and both sets of grandparents and even two sets of great grandparents that are all a part of their everyday lives. So I don't fight to stay here because of the weather, or because it is a really great place to spend your life. I fight to stay here because I am so lucky to have everyone around me. And in my situation (single mom by choice) I think it is HUGELY important for my kids to have a large extended family that they can count on. And I am so lucky to actually own a home in this area. And to live in that home and host parties and have a big backyard for my kids to run and play in...well it is one of the greatest joys of my life. And also one of my greatest accomplishments. And I am not sure how to give it up.

The difficulties don't even end there. Even if I had made the decision that I was going to move. Even if I gave up my home knowing damn well that I will never be able to afford to get back into the housing market here. Even if with all of those hard decisions I had come to the conclusion that I needed to sell. I couldn't. The housing market has TANKED in my area and my house is now worth approximately $200,000 less than it was just a year ago. I probably could not sell the house for much more than I paid for it over 5 years ago. So even if I decided to go that route, it would not work. I could not sell it enough to pay back my initial mortgage. And lest you think that I have been one of the many consumers that has used their home value to rack up some serious debt...I haven't. I have absolutely no debt except for my mortgage. I have no credit cards. I own my car. So I do not and have not led a frivolous lifestyle that has ended me in this position. What has ended me in this position is that my marriage ended. And like thousands of other couples out there, I am living proof that sometimes people simply can't afford to split up. If we had been in this financial position over a year ago when we decided to call it quits for good...I doubt we would have been able to afford to do it.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't regret our decision to split up for one second. In fact I think it might have saved my sanity. But it all comes down to the bare truth of the matter. My life in this house is not feasible as a one-income household. Or at least I don't think it is. I spent the entire morning today trying to figure out if there is any way on earth I can swing this. And it might be possible. But it comes at high costs. Like my poor son who will not be able to continue getting his speech therapy. I simply cannot afford $70 a week. I will have to make cuts everywhere. And I will have to work. A LOT. And in doing that I will miss a great deal of my kids' lives. And that makes my heart hurt.

So today is bittersweet in many ways. First of all, my baby is old enough to go to daycare. And second, I have to open my eyes and get my ass in gear and do everything I can possibly do to see if I can possibly stay here in my house. And if I can't? Well it is time to inform my parents that we are moving in and try and rent out my house for a while. Let's all pray that doesn't happen, shall we?

I have hesitated for a long time in posting the realities of my finances here on my blog. But this is the truth. It is the ugly truth of divorce and the aftermath. And it is time for me to get my head out of my ass and face it. All I know is that I will fight to the death to keep this house for my kids and for myself. But the most important thing is the happiness and health of my kids. And truthfully, as long as I come home at the end of the day to their faces, I guess it really doesn't matter what or where that home is. I mean, really...look at that face!