Ollie Update

No diapers, strike 2

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie has been potty trained for well over a year now, with no problems whatsoever. He’s been dry at naps for ages, and he goes at school by himself, no problem. So for awhile now I’ve been meaning to try to get him through the final hump, no diaper overnight, but I just kept putting it off. It seemed like it was always a bad time. We kept saying, “Oh, we’ll do it after we get back from vacation” or “well, this weekend is busy, maybe next weekend”.

We had tried awhile ago, but he just wasn’t ready for it at that time. However, with school and everything, he’s just seemed so grown up lately, and it didn’t seem fair that he had to wear a diaper at night just because his parents weren’t getting off their butts and doing it. Finally, he had two dry diapers in a row and I thought, “Okay, its time to get this done.”

I went into it with my eyes open. This isn’t my first time at the rodeo. I think it took Evie at least 2 nights before she had a dry one, so I was expecting Ollie to take at least that, but probably more. We gave him a lot of talks about what a big boy he was to pump him up, offered a reward, and I prepared the area ahead of time. I put 5 sets of sheets and mattress pads on the bed, one on top of the other, and made a stack of spare blankets and pjs. If he was wet, we could just strip off the top layer and toss him back in bed, easy peasy.

After the first few nights, I decided that he needed a little help to get a successful night. I was hoping this would give him the confidence to really do it. It seemed like he was waking up and going first thing in the morning, probably because he forgot he wasn’t wearing a diaper. The problem was, if I woke him up a little early to go to the potty, he wouldn’t go back to sleep. So I started taking him to the bathroom when I went to bed, hoping that would buy him some extra time.

This wasn’t working, so next I decided to start setting my alarm in the night. I hoped that if I took him around 4, I would catch him before he went and then he would be able to go back to sleep. When he was wet at 4, I moved it back to 2, and then 1. I was trying so hard to make him successful, but eventually I had to throw in the towel and admit he couldn’t do it. Despite my efforts, he’s just not ready yet.

It was pretty disheartening. It was just so much work, making the bed 5 times every night, washing load after load of sheets to get ready for the next night, getting up every night and cleaning him up, trying to maintain a positive attitude through the whole thing keep encouraging him. I was so exhausted and it was just all for nothing. I have to admit that on the last night, when I was cleaning him up at 1 a.m. and changing the sheets for the umpteenth time, I cried a little. Hey, I was tired.

At the end of the day, he’s got to be ready, and no amount of preparation or sheet changing can change that. He’s only 3, so it’s not like he’s behind or anything. Like everything with parenting, sometimes you’ve just got to take it as it comes.

Email from the past – A day in the life

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I was searching my work email and I came across the following email:

From: Halbach, Shane C.
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 1:46 PM
To: Sara
Subject: ooooooh Sara

Ooooh boy oh boy.

So we were playing hide and seek today. Oliver found a great hiding spot: balled up under the shelves behind the curtain in the bathroom. He was down there for a while, and when I found him and he came out, he was *covered*, head-to-toe, in crystallized cat urine. It was in his hair. It was in his eyelashes. His face and hands were sticky with it. His clothes looked white.

I put his clothes right in the laundry and put him in the shower. It was so gross. When I crawled in there to clean it out, it smelled so ungodly, I can’t imagine how he could have been laying in there (face down, mind you). It was putrid. Afterwards, I told him 3 or 4 times, “Buddy, if something smells that bad, don’t crawl into it, okay?”

As you can imagine, he was generally in good spirits throughout all of this.

And that’s the kind of emails you get at work when you’re a mom.

Long time readers will remember that we once had a problem with Nala using that part of the bathroom as a toilet. It turned out she was up to her old tricks again (but hasn’t been since then).

Even though this was back in March, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I can only assure you it was probably worse than it sounds.

Children covered in bees

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The other day I received an email from Ollie’s school. It turns out that the class had taken a walk in the park, and had unfortunately stumbled full-force into a nest of yellow jackets. What had started as a fun little nature walk ended in 21 screaming 3 year olds, covered in bees.

Can you imagine the carnage of an entire preschool class being swarmed by bees? Kids running, kids screaming, kids crying, dogs and cats, living together…mass hysteria. I doubt bedlam is too strong a word.

In the email, one of the children was quoted as saying “They can’t talk so they tell us with their stings!” “WHY DO THEY HAVE TO TELL US SO MANY TIMES?” I assume she continued. All in all, 9 kids were stung. Needless to say, the school nurse was a little busy that day.

Oliver was one of the children who was stung. Apparently a bee or two had crawled up the leg of his shorts and gotten him a few times on the inner thigh. (!!) Of course, it took the nurse awhile to realize he’d been stung, since he was just sitting there smiling and generally in a good mood; she thought he’d been sent down with the other kids by mistake. That boy and his ridiculous pain tolerance (remember how he forgot to mention even once his chronic ear infections?) By the time Sara picked him up from school he had already forgotten which leg had been stung, and he insists that the red welts are “mosquito bites”.

By the time I got home from work, the whole event was a distant memory.

“Did anything happen at school today?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“Did you go for a walk to the park?”
“Yeah, we did.”
“…and did anything happen while you were at the park?” (You know, such as you and 20 of your classmates being swarmed and stung repeatedly, while everybody ran around and screamed like some kind of a cartoon?)
“Yeah!” said Ollie excitedly, “I found a stick!”

Oh well. Better than being traumatized I guess. Despite living through the Titanic-level disaster scenario of 21 children covered in yellow jackets, his outlook on bees hasn’t changed a bit.

First day of school

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Yesterday, our big boy had his first day of school.

first day of school (13)

It’s so funny how each kid is a little different. With Evie, she didn’t want us hanging around, she wanted us to get out of the way so she could start meeting people. With Ollie I’m definitely experiencing a little bit of the “how am I going to leave this poor, little boy on his own?” On the other hand, I never really had one of those, “Oh my little boy is growing up!” moments. Maybe that’s because the whole thing was just too chaotic, with so many people starting today and figuring out a new school, etc. Or maybe that’s just being the second kid again.

I do know that Ollie is going to have a BLAST at school. I’m so excited for him to have so much dedicated playing time. This boy *loves* to play. I’m so glad he’ll finally have a chance to make some friends of his own (as opposed to Evie’s friends), explore his own interests (as opposed to Evie’s interests), and just to be his own person. I just know he’s going to grow and blossom so much this year, and that’s really exciting.

first day of school (28)

At this point, the whole thing was kind of old hat to Evie. Yeah, yeah, kindergarten, so what.

first day of school (7)

She might have acted blasé, but I could tell she was excited based on all the extra energy she had. She’s always excited to meet new people, but I think she was actually more excited about Oliver starting school. She was a little disappointed that she had to go to her own class this morning, rather than watch him. But she did meet some other kids, and her and another girl “robbed a bank”. So, you know, I guess the teachers know who to keep an eye on now.

I’m not sure how different kindergarten is going to be from preschool. But her classroom definitely seems more like a “real” classroom, with a lot more responsibilities for the kids, and her teacher seems a little more old school. It seems like a really good environment for Evie, but then again, school just seems like a really good environment for Evie. She’ll just absorb up everything they throw at her, and then re-forge the entire school the way she wants it, like she always does.

Crime Scene?

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Crime scene photos, or spontaneous nap? You decide!

crime_scene

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