Journey with Julia

Potty Training and Kai-lan

This was the start to my week and yes we are trying to work on potty training here this week. By this I mean try to give Julia just a bit of a push, she's used the potty occasionally in the past but we are hoping to get her to understand to use it all the time. Some days she gets this, others not at all. It's been a long week so far, here's a peek into the last couple of days. Enjoy and be forewarned, yes there is talk of "poo" there I said it! So if you don't want to know the details, stop reading now! :)

Since Ray is on call this week and worked most of Tuesday night, he finally got home around 9 only to get 2 more calls within 10 minutes of being home and having to head right back out the door. Because of this Julia was sleeping with me Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. From 3 Am to 4 AM I can't tell you how many times I got kicked and HARD, til finally at 4 I was just exasperated and got out of bed and came out here! Naturally within a minute my munchkin followed me. We didn't get back to sleep til around 6:30 or so, almost to the point of just getting up and dealing with it with it for the rest of the day. I almost wish we had.

Now you have to keep in mind we are potty training this week. So Julia has been in big girl underwear and we have been making an effort to go to the potty every half hour-45 minutes this first few days to get her really used to going. It's been going fairly well, of course there have been accidents. Yesterdays was a doozy. I guess I either lost track of the time or got distracted. I had a couple of phone calls come in back to back so it was likely distracted. So I didn't notice her slip her undies off (she had a dress on) well we were supposed to have another play date so I wanted to try to get her down for an early nap. I figured after our rough morning, shouldn't be too hard. On the way to check her and turn off the tv and I realize oh my she's wet, then I realize, nope no undies.. GREAT.. so where are they??? I find them and a trail of "presents" that you can imagine was very hard to see on this dark carpet in this ever so dark room, you can't light this room, it just sucks the light up. YEP, she had pooped and at least she knew she didn't like the feel of the dirty undies.. I'm holding on to that thought for all it's worth at this point... so I calmly clean it all up (or I thought all, I was still finding some as late as 7 last night!!! yikes!) and show her where it was "supposed" to go. And we go on and get ready for nap.

So nap time. At this point I was exhausted too so I'm trying every trick to get her to lie down and give in to sleep. NO such luck. The play date was supposed to be at 3 so we started this process around 1:30. she was bouncing off the ceiling., the heck with the walls. After a friend stopped by a little after 2 (and she can attest to how exhausted I'm sure I looked at this point! lol) we tried again to lie down, now I'm pretty sure at this point we are not going on the play date, because I know my child and if doesn't get at least a 45 minutes nap she's a nightmare through the evening and I was not prepared to deal with that on top of everything else. So I am getting more and more frustrated with her by the moment,

Julia has been watching "Nihao Kailan" and yesterday's lesson, yes believe it or not, was on "calm, calm down". IN the show Kailan had her friends watch the "hula ducks" going "side to side, side to side, side to side" to calm, calm down. So my entirely too intelligent child starts whispering in my ear... "side to side, side to side, side to side" LMAO off at this point because yes I am beyond exhausted and let's face it she learned the lesson!!! And then, THANK GOD she went to sleep! So I come out here, and email a quick note to daddy, only to get an unsympathetic reply of "can't breathe laughing too hard".... and found out we were the entertainment for a few guys at the shop yesterday! Wonderful, he's lucky they are dad's too and I know they and their wives have been or are currently in similar situations daily.

Good thing Ray didn't have any calls last night, however he might have been better off if he had. He could NOT stop taking delight in my day, to the point that I started picking up Julia's shoes near my chair and aiming them at him. (just the light shoes, no heels and it was really done in fun, though I'm not sure his mom understood that part. lol) To top it off, on the bottom of one of the shoes... was yep you guessed it more Poo!!!!

At this point, I called it a night and went to bed to watch a movie, he gave Julia a bath and put her to bed. Good Daddy.

Today has been better, she's already pooped on the potty first thing and told me "we don't poop in pants!" Thank you Lord!! Sadly this hasn't lasted and we have changed wet pants several times today. But we will get there. She's just learning after all.

I'm sorry this was so long, but it was truly the only way to convey our day to you all. Hope it makes you smile. Go ahead laugh, we all have.