Potty update

Today at the store, we (Noah, Luke and I) were standing outside of the bathrooms waiting for everyone to go potty then all of a sudden Luke was gone! I freaked out for a second and then got the idea to yell into the bathrooms for him. Sure enough he was in there! I asked Bradley to go back in and just kind of keep track of him (make sure he's not playing with toilets or something) and guess what!!! Luke came walking out, shirt in hand (HA!) skipping! telling me that "I went potty myself!" I was SO EXCITED!!!! That's the first time he's sat on the toilet without my prompting much less peed too!!! I'm not exactly sure why he took his shirt off other than that he has been known to get it wet (he WAS peeing standing up.... another fascination of his :)- I'm sure he'd love that I'm telling everyone this). But no complaints here!!! I was THRILLED!! High 10's all around! We had to buy him his beloved "wellow bubbles" to celebrate :)
When we got home he did it another few times ON HIS OWN, WITHOUT PROMPTING. I'm ecstatic!!!!
This is going better than I ever would have pictured!! Almost better than my other kids (so far!). I'm loving it!

My Kelly turned 6!!!

A trip down memory lane (sorry, but I do this for all of my kids, ever birthday :)):

here she is in her new flip flops, this year


Kelly's first bath, newborn



First birthday



Second birthday



Third



Kelly at age 4



This was last year.... turning 5


Yesterday was Kelly's birthday. I so can't believe how much Kelly has grown over the last 6 years. She's turning into such a sweet little lady. Some of the things I love about Kelly: she loves her family. she helps out whenever she can. I love how she loves to organize. her desire to be good and follow the rules. her smile. her laugh. that she's so cuddly. she loves her family. she wants to be a good example. that she will write me letters and draw me pictures all the time. that she loves school. her sense of humor. her creativity. her imagination. that she likes to recycle anything and everything. her packrattedness. she just wants to have fun. she's very giving. she is very generous with her compliments. very forgiving. very grateful. I love how she takes care of her brothers and sister, she's just very compassionate toward everyone.


There are probably a million more things that could be said about Kelly. She's just a really sweet, loving little girl. I can't imagine our family, or my heart without Kelly. I'm so grateful that our Heavenly Father sent her to us and that we have the privilege of watching her learn and grow. She's an amazing little girl. Happy Birthday Kelly!
(I'll do another post with her actual birthday party once I get all caught up with all my other pictures)

Charity on the farm

Way back in April, Charity's class went on a field trip to the Kaysville Farm. She got to bring Daddy with her because Mommy was puking her brains out the day before and didn't think the Farm was such a good idea. They both had SO MUCH FUN! Charity's teacher gave Nate the fancy title of "Man Horse" not to be confused with another name that sounds similar. I'm pretty sure that name got more than a few chuckles. But Nate was the only Dad there so he was responsible for carrying all the boxes of lunch boxes and such. I should really have him tell about the Farm and their experience. It's not like I was there......

They sure had a lot of fun though. I'm gonna see if I can get Nate to document this for us.

Potty Pouting

Did we start trying again? Yes. Does Lukey like it? see for yourself.

Back on Friday I finally had Luke hand over all of his diapers to Noah. I told myself we are not going to go back to them EVER AGAIN!!! No matter how much pain and torture we go through. (Since in the past I just kept giving up because he really didn't seem ready. And frankly, he really doesn't seem all that ready now either, but ready or not.....)

Luke's an interesting little character. I've learned a lot about him during all of this. Luke is the kind of person who doesn't like to do things that he is not perfectly good at. So this has come in handy the times that he does manage to make it to the potty in time. He's really proud of himself and feels really fulfilled. He's not big on trying new things, so changing from diapers to underwear has been less than comfortable for him. He's not a big fan of failing, but he does enough punishing himself that I don't feel like it's necessary to make him feel even worse when he's had accidents. He really doesn't know WHEN he needs to go. I think what it really comes down to is Luke is busy. He doesn't like someone telling him that he needs to do something like sit on a potty when clearly "there is no pee coming out!" He does throw quite the fit and requires WAY too much bribery to get him to even sit on the potty. As it is, he has to bring the potty (most of the time) into the tv room, get a juice (we usually don't even have these but I bought them for Kelly's bday party, and now they're all gone), and watch a show while he sits on his potty and accidentally pees in it (we have yet to see number 2 IN his potty :)). He refuses to sit on a big potty, so accidents in public places are almost a given. Which I'm really okay with, and I can understand, so far it's been bearable and I've been prepared.

Contrary to how this all sounds, he's done really well. He's actually amazingly good at holding it! He waited like 3 days before finally pooping once we started the potty training, which seems humanly impossible for Luke....he's very much a once, if not twice, a day pooper.

We've been rewarding him with a sticker on his cool chart, and a prize (when he remembers) from the wall-- we've had prizes hanging up in the bathroom for the last like 3 months. And the few times that he will sit on the potty when nothing comes out, he does get a treat for at least doing that. Even when he's mad all the way through it :). On Friday, he was doing so well and had put a sticker on the "Special Prize" spot on his chart, so he got to choose a special prize. I was really surprised when he picked a date with Mommy. Back in February the Doctor told me to use "alone time with mom or dad" as a reward when I potty train him, and honestly I almost laughed. He was totally not into the whole "alone time" thing yet. And that was 4 months ago, so he's had time to get more into it, but it still surprised me. Made me feel like I've been depriving him of said alone time simply because I didn't think he would like it. So anyway. I thought it was important to go on our date that night since the quicker he is rewarded the better. Nate made it possible for us to go and as requested by Luke we went to McDonald's for ice cream and fries. We had such a good time. He is so talkative on his own. It's funny how high maintenance my kids become when they're on their own too :) Makes me laugh. He had a lot of fun on the playground by himself because nobody else was there for the first half hour. Then he ended up having an accident (just milliseconds after I asked him to go sit on the potty) and we had to leave shortly after (confession: I did let Lukey shoot a few more hoops before leaving.... I figured he wasn't hurting anything. another confession: I had a change of pants but I wasn't in the mood to do the whole clean up at McDonald's mess..... we were starting to get crowded out by the dinner crowd anyway). It was a fun little date and I have now learned not to underestimate how my kids feel about something until I've really (REALLY) tried it out. And to not discount the fact that they change their minds so quickly. Luke told me on the way home that "I don't want to wear underwear. I just want to have a diaper so that I don't have to pee in my pants." Poor kid. If only that was socially acceptable....

That was long, sorry. My overall feelings: as much as I HATE potty training, Luke is doing much better than I would have thought. Hopefully we can stay positive about it all and I'm really hoping we can skip all the poop stuff that I had to deal with with Bradley.... I'm still having nightmares about that! If I've said it once I've said it a million times.... I would have 20 more kids if I didn't have to potty train them..... it's really not my favorite.

Having only one kid in diapers for the last few days has definitely been nice though :) I'll probably keep you TOO updated on the potty train and all of our happenings, but helps me stay up.

Some Pics Off Nate's Phone

Nate took these with his phone and we finally got around to uploading them onto the computer. I was really impressed with how well they turned out, coming from a phone and all. I really like these ones with the tree and the sunset. This is just across the street.

Here's another one with Grandma Ruthie swinging. I just love these pictures.

And of course some more of Kelly riding her bike.