"I'm A Big Boy"

WARNING: Proud Mommy rant about to happen!

For a while now, we have been "playing" with the potty.  Harlen has been very interested in the potty since he saw a little girl at daycare go through the potty training process. We have been very encouraging and have been letting him investigate and get comfortable with the idea of using the potty.  I know that some children find using the potty as very scary and we have been trying to get him comfortable with the idea for a while.  He has done pretty good and actually loves to strip down and sit on the potty.  We have spent countless hours just sitting, reading, playing and talking while he just sits and does not produce anything....... until now.  We have been working on pushing since I have run out of ideas to get him to use the potty.  Last week he pushed so hard that he passed gas and produced a little something, if you know what I mean, in the potty.  We were proud, even if it was a little "shart" and he got two M&M's for producing "something." Well he did the same thing a couple nights later and got rewarded again.  I have been waiting and waiting for him to get excited about actually using the potty instead of using it as a seat while he reads and plays.  Two nights ago, on 2-5-13 (yes, an actual date is needed for this monumental occasion), he went pee pee in the potty.  I was on the phone with the hubs when all of a sudden, Harlen stood up and pointed to the potty and said "poopy."  No son, that is pee pee and this is when the freak out began.  I quickly hung up the phone from my envious husband, who was so upset to miss the occasion, and started singing, dancing, running around and giving encouraging words with the boy who I swear was an infant yesterday.  He got a couple M&M's and kept saying "I'm a BIG BOY."  To see the joy on his face when he realized that what he did was so good. This was big news and called for a mass text to family and friends to spread the word.  Now, I am not counting my chickens before they hatch.  I do not think that he is fully ready for the massive undertaking of becoming fully potty trained but we will keep practicing until it is time to start the undertaking of actually potty training. I will use this time to keep him on the right track and keep encouraging him to use the potty for what it is intended to be used for. 

The pictures that you are about to see are only something a mommy would appreciate so if you do not like seeing pictures of pee pee in the potty, stop reading now.

Sitting on the potty

Harlens first pee pee in the potty!

M&M face!

 I hope that I get to blog about many, many, more occasions of him using the potty soon!  We shall see. Until next time......

A Week In Review

Well, another week has past.  It is true what they say..... time flies when you have a kid.  I remember when I was pregnant that everyone always made it very clear "not to blink" because time goes by so fast when your little bundle arrives and boy where they right.  We are about to celebrate Harlen's 2nd birthday and it is crazy to me that two years have past already.  It seems like yesterday that I was uncomfortable because I was "oh so pregnant" and anxious because I was about to meet my little bundle.  I will put together a post when we celebrate his birthday as a family on the 12th of February and with friends and family on the 16th.  We are looking so forward to recognizing out little guys birthday and seeing his face when we sing happy birthday to him. 

In the mean time, I thought i would do a photo dump of the past week or so with pictures that describes our days and what we spend them doing.



Harlen with his "girlfriend," Caroline. He walked her out of daycare holding her hand the WHOLE way to her car. What a gentleman.

Making brownies with Mommy!

 

Painting the deck, with a little water, while in our PJ's!  Why Not?!?

 

Cuddle Time with his best friend, Mongo (Bugee, BugaBoo, Meaty).

 

Daddy was out of towm this week so we sent him a sweet message that we put together during bath time.

 

Random picture, but it hit me like a ton of bricks the other day that my child no longer "fits" on his changing pad. He is getting so big.  (please excuse the junk on his dresser)

 

 

 

Chris and Hudson at 11 weeks old!

My boys!  All these men/boys have a piece of my heart.

 

Cuddle time with Colton while watching a movie and Papa and Grandmas on Friday night. (Btw, Colton is not in pain, in the picture below, he was showing his hatred for the flash)

 

 

 

The hubs and I got a wild hair to paint the Living Room, Foyer, Hallway and a couple other small areas.  The DIY project has started.  Hopefully we will get it done in a couple more days. Fingers crossed.

 

 

Harlen has become OBSESSED with play doh.  He loves to make pancake (flatted the dough out), cut it with the little yellow scissors you see in the picture and try to eat it.  Lovely :)

The "Fire Truck Song" is VERY popular in our house.  It is a book that this guy recorded himself singing the words to.  Harlen would listen to it 1,000 times a day....if we let him.

 

 

That is our week, for the most part.  Add in work and regular play, routine and responsibilites and you have an idea of what my week looks like.  I would not change our crazy life for anything. 

 

The Guilt Is Getting To Me!

When envisioning my life as a mom, like many other girls when growing up, I thought that I would be a mommy that met their kids when they got off the bus, did creative activity's and be that "cool" mom that was fun, full of life, always had surprises up her sleeve to help entertain the kids, had dinner on the table when the hubby got home from work and had a family life that was more like something you would see on an episode of Leave it to Beaver or the Brady Bunch.  Now that I am a mom, own a house, have two car payments, bills bills and more bills, a child that I want to give everything to that his little heart desires, and vacations that I want to take (but can never find the time to take), I am the farthest thing from a "stay at home mom."  I work an 8 to 5 job and get to only spent 2 days a week with my son and I HATE IT.  I am actually tearing up just thinking about all the time that I am missing with him at this age.  Time that I am never going to get back.  Time that I pray he will not look back on and think.... daycare teachers spent more time with me growing up than my mom and dad did (That may be a dramatic statement, but it is a true fear of mine).  Do I have a ton of guilt in me for being a working mom? You better believe I do.  I have guilt that keeps me up at night and makes me emotional to think about.  I know that being a mom that gets to stay at home to raise kids is the hardest job that their is, but I want it.  I want to see my kids wake up in the morning, eat breakfast with them, have play time in the yard together, cuddle with before nap time, do crafts with and make a ton of memories with. I want to be able to raise him every single day and not be his mommy on the weekend and share his time with someone else during the week. To give you a glimpse of our life, our daily schedule looks like this:

Monday through Friday:

• I wake up at 6:20am, after hitting the snooze button for 30 minutes (I am totally not the girl that jumps out of bed when the alarm goes off)
• Get ready and then grab Harlen out of bed at 6:50 to head to daycare (in his pj's). Harlen goes to an in-home daycare at the most amazing place ever.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE his daycare lady, Ms. Kim.  She has been an amazing stand in for me while I am away from him working.
• Harlen gets to daycare at 7:30am each morning and I quickly rush in, give him a kiss, wave goodbye and head out the door. 
• I return to pick him up around 5:30pm and then we head home for our 30 min ride.  Some days he wants to watch a movie and is too tired to be his energetic talkative self and then other days he wants to talk, laugh, point out trucks, planes and birds while we ride home (those are my favorite days).
• Once home, he plays while I prepare his dinner.  This is one thing that I need to work on because we do not get to eat dinner with him.  He eats dinner before we do because I do not have time to come home from work and cook a meal and still get him to bed when he needs to be.  HUGE BUMMER!
• After dinner, he takes a bath and gets ready for bed.
• Once in his pj's, hubby and I take turns reading a couple books to him and saying his prayers and then it is lights out at 7:30pm.

As you can see, I have a total of 2.5 hours a day with him. Within that 2.5 hours, we spend an hour in the car, 30 minutes with him eating dinner, and the remainder getting him ready for bed/bath.  The quality time is pretty much zero.  Actually, seeing it written down makes me want to cry (tears are starting to well up).  I am missing out on so much of his life.  What makes it even worse is that the hubs and I are busy on the weekends as well.. We try to catch up on everything that we can not do during the week like keep the house clean, get laundry done, keep the yard maintained, get errands ran and so forth and we really don't get to spend the quality time with him on the weekends that we want to.  Ya know, the typical stuff that everyone does when they are grownups. The vision of playing in the yard and watching him run around laughing and being a kid are typically shadowed by carting him from Target, Publix, Walmart, the Bank, and so on.  Placing my kid in and out of his car seat every Saturday morning/afternoon and watching him play with his toys while I scrub the bathroom is not the idea that I had in mind when I became a mom.  It is what it is and we get it done, but not without guilt. 


Moments I have missed out on:

Until next time.......