2.07.2014

hello undies!

it has been almost 8 months since hadley potty-trained and i can't believe i haven't blogged about it. what kind of mother am i to not brag about such a monumental event in my toddler's life? what kind of mother would i be if i didn't show you a picture or two of a cute toddler fanny in undies?

i am so the kind of mother who would show you those pictures. i am and i will.



cute, right?

hadley started showing interest in the potty a month or two before her 2nd birthday. i guess that is a bonus to having an older sister. but we didn't start doing anything about it then for two reasons: 1- i am lazy and 2- i am lazy. seriously, i can admit i'm flawed as a mother at times. so what i am telling you is that i was too lazy to potty-train my toddler who was showing obvious signs of interest? yup, sounds about right. i was lazy in the sense that i just didn't want to take time to do it, to have to clean up the many pee puddles that would be in the house. i was too lazy to run quickly to the potty with a toddler in my arms praying she doesn't leak(which ended up happening many times... little drips down the hallway). lazy in the sense of fear when we leave the house at all. maybe a little lazy too when it comes to public restrooms. well that isn't laziness. i just think they are gross and i hate when a toddler has to use them. you know they put their hands on everything and then in everything. who wants to welcome that.

then at hadley's 2 yr appt her pediatrician told me we should really potty-train her since she was obviously "ready." if you can' trust your ped, who can you trust?

one month later, we were both ready to accept our fate.. potty-training time.

we did the weekend at home with no diapers, no undies method. i think that is a method anyway. that is what we did with caroline. it was a long, boring weekend at home with lots of trips to the little potty. i tried making her sit on the potty every fifteen minutes. she obliged most of the time. overall, i'd say she did about 50% in the potty and 50% on the floor. not too bad for her first go around. i got nervous about school that week though, should i send her in undies to reinforce what we've been putting many hours in at or should i go back to diapers so her teachers don't have to mess w accidents? thankfully hadley has amazing preschool teachers. they let us go full on with the undies. sure she had an accident or two the first three days but after that she was smooth sailing on the toilet. aren't those little toilets at preschools so cute? i will also mention that we continued for a good few weeks with her potty chart. it was a great system which rewarded her with stickers and treats for going to the bathroom on the potty. this worked with caroline too. it is amazing how positive reinforcement works!

and she's done amazingly well ever since. seriously. i still can't believe how well she did potty training at 2 years and 2 months old. pretty impressive i think. and we really owe a lot of thanks to big sister caroline. she really makes everything so fun for hadley, even going to the bathroom. big sisters rock. especially if that big sister happens to be caroline.

once out of diapers, she wants nothing to do with them anymore. this even includes pull ups. i only request she wear a pull up at bedtime because if she is sleeping, she is likely to pee during that time but hadley is stubborn (i know i have mentioned that like a hundred times before). she wants what she wants and that is the end of it. my compromise that isn't working to my advantage is waiting until she falls asleep at night to put a pull up on her. unfortunately she wakes up during the night once the pull up is wet, so i have to take it off and put undies on her. thankfully she, 9 times out of 10, remains dry the rest of the night or wakes me up to take her to the potty.  see why this isn't working out for me? it involves me waking up once or twice a night. i so miss a good nights sleep. on the bright side, she has really done such a great job with day and night potty training. she really impresses me.

now that hadley is in undies, you'd think she'd want to flaunt her cute self around in them all the time. i would if i looked that cute in my undies. she's never done it though. she's funny like that and really always wants clothes on. i tell her she can sing, dance, jump, run, skip, play all in her undies if she wants to but she says no, she wants her clothes on. like i said, she knows what she wants.


and if you want to see the post on caroline potty training... click here

2.06.2014

an everyday blue

phil and i married in august of 2000. bodi joined our family in october of 2000, our third month of marriage. she was only a wee pup with big ears then. as she grew, i felt sad when we'd leave for work and she'd be home by herself all day long. i, being a completely blind new dog owner, thought bodi would be so much happier if she had a playmate to be at home all day long with. little did we know then how all of our lives would be turned upside down by the addition of the one and only blue dog. bodi gave blue hell for most of her life and blue, the laid back one, just dealt with it.

when i told phil i wanted to add a second dog to our home, he reluctantly said that if we did, we needed to get a dog that no one else wanted. so i familiarized myself with rescue dogs and thought this was the way we should go this time, having purchased bodi from a breeder. boy did i open pandora's box here. i had no idea what a sad, huge world existed within humane societies and rescue organizations. it was completely overwhelming and so sad all at once. there were just so many dogs in need. this was how we would get our next dog... adoption. (i loved it so much i went on to volunteer with the humane society and german shepherd rescue for the first 4 years we had the dogs, prior to the kids)

one day while visiting a petsmart dog adoption day in forsyth county, i saw the most beautiful blue-eyed dog. she was so sweet, just sitting quietly in her crate(first clue that she was a lazy one!). i asked if i could take her out and get to know her, to see what i thought of her personality. it was then that i saw this black-eyeliner-wearing dog only had three legs. what! three legs and still walking? sure, she had a bit of a limp (i guess you could call it that) to her but seemed to get around ok for the short walk we took through the parking lot. her name was blue. she had the sweetest, calmest demeanor ever.

it was love. i wanted her.

i went home to tell phil the exciting news, that i had found the most amazing dog to adopt. and per his directions, no one else seemed to want this one. she had been at the humane society for 6 months already. i don't know how such a beautiful dog was still there. i like to think she was waiting for us.

i remember our first night home with blue. i had a jeep cherokee at the time and went to carry her out of it, easing her trip to the ground since she was three-legged after all. our plan was to have bodi meet blue in front of our house, on neutral ground. it was in that split second when i set blue's three feet on the ground and she hauled off after bodi that i knew we would never feel sorry for this dog. i'm pretty sure it was the fact that she only had three legs that made her so quick! she ran after bodi, squirrels, rabbits, us, whatever. nope, no worries at all.

she went on to be the laziest, easiest, chubbiest, most family-friendly dog anyone could have. she found pleasure in the little things... like laying under a tree, laying in the grass, laying in the shrubs, laying at our feet, all with her face pointing towards the sun.  some may call her a lazy dog. i'd agree with that. she never liked playing ball, chase, or any sort of game a normal dog does. no, our blue dog was in fact content doing nothing at all. we loved our easy-going girl for that reason.


the girls really loved blue too. blue would easily let the girls lay on her, put hats on her, pretty much whatever they wanted to do and she wouldn't put up a fight. her favorite part about the girls was definitely the fact the they loved giving her treats and snacks. so, that was part of the reason blue turned in to such a chubby girl. she lived for food.


i just can't say enough about this dog. she was the best.


it was a super difficult decision that was made on dec 20th, 2013. after giving us years of fun, love, comfort, laughs, and happiness, we had to put our old girl down. walking became so tough for a 13 year old three-legged dog. it was compassion more than anything that made our decision just a smidge easier.

we miss her every single day.

it is a strange silence in our house without any dogs. just not hearing their nails hit the wood floors when they walk, hearing them pant loudly or having them at our feet at the table waiting for crumbs. bodi and blue filled our hearts and our home for 13 of our almost 14 years of marriage. they were a part of the family.

we miss you blue blue. thanks for being the awesome dog you were. (even in the years you would break free from the fence and we had to drive around the local neighborhoods to find you, then lift your heavy self into our car. you sure could get around in your early years.)