Usually when we move I have us unpacked and pretty much settled in within a few days. I don't like to be unorganized and I don't like clutter so getting everything in it's place as soon as possible makes me feel better! We've been in our house for almost a month now and I am just now starting to feel like we're settled. And I still have four or five boxes to unpack! It's nice to have all of this extra space... I haven't felt too cluttered because most of the boxes that were still packed up were kept in the living room and we spend most of time in the family room so it was nice not to have to see it all the time. Most of our walls are still bare so even though I feel settled it doesn't quite feel like home yet, if that makes sense? We have a pretty long to-do list still but it's little things... or at least "little" compared to what we've done already! We've got to put in the baseboards in the kitchen and living room. I also have to paint the chair rail and all of the baseboards (except in the kids' rooms, their baseboards are finished!) but honestly that's pretty low on my to-do list. So if you come over please don't stare at the baseboards... they'll get painted eventually. :) I also need to paint the bedroom and bathroom doors. I'd like to get those painted as soon as possible. Hopefully by next week that will be crossed off our list.We have to stain our railings, too, but that's another thing that I know has to be done but I'm not really in a hurry to do it. Painting the kitchen is probably number one on my list. We want to put in backsplash, and were actually planing on doing so and that's why we hadn't painted yet. But I don't think we can afford what we want to do yet so paint will have to do for now. And Dave has to put down laminate on the three stairs that go from the dining area into the family room. That's pretty high on my list, too. I think that's about it for major things that are left, which really feels like little things after we replaced all but the bathroom flooring, repainted all the walls except for the bathrooms, and completely gutted the kitchen! Bathrooms are pretty high on my list, too, because they both definitely need attention. The yellow wall in the kids bathroom drives me crazy and the walls in our bathroom just look dingy. Even though we have a lot to do it's definitely coming together!
I love just about everything about this house, even though it's not finished yet. But some of my favorite things are opening all the blinds every morning. The natural light that we get is awesome! I love having windows and doors on both sides of the house. Much different than being in our apartment and everything basically being on one side.
I also love all the space! We have rooms that won't get used much at all but it's nice to know they're there if we need them!
And I love, love, LOVE having our own yard!! We have a sprinkler system but a few of the sprinkler heads have to be replaced so I've been doing all the watering. I use a hose sprinkler so really I just have to turn it on and leave it and make sure to move it around the yard every 15 minutes or so but a lot of the time the kids and I will hangout outside while the water is on and just play. We love it.
There are a million other things that I love about it but I think about and feel thankful for those three things every day.
A funny story... one of our first nights in the house there was a HUGE thunder storm. It was like 3:00 in the morning and I woke up from all the lightning (that was lighting up our room even with the blinds closed) and the loud thunder. I usually LOVE thunder storms, I always have, but I was so SCARED that night! Since Dave and I have been married we've always lived in apartments or townhomes... Now that we live in a house... it's just our house. We're not attached to another house, we're not buried under two other families that live above us. We live in a huge neighborhood but I felt like we were just out in the middle of nowhere... completely exposed and vulnerable to the lightning! At least that's how I felt. It's kind of hard to explain but I was definitely scared. I even woke Dave up and asked him if he thought the umbrella that's on our deck (part of our patio furniture) would attract the lightning. Dave said it was fine and fell right back to sleep. I couldn't sleep, though! I was on my phone googling lightning rods and wondering if we should get one! *lol* It's funny now but that night I was terrified! We've had another thunder storm since then and I am happy to report I was able to enjoy it and I wasn't scared. Maybe because it wasn't in the middle of the night...
Anyway! We've been working on potty training Ashlynn. I think we started on the 5th of July. She's doing AWESOME except she is scared to poop in the potty!!! *Warning... I'm about to talk a lot about poop! She's pooped in the potty six times now and probably had the same amount of accidents. That accounts for 12 poops. We started on the 5th, it's the 23rd now... she's usually a once-a-day-pooper... that's 18 days and 12 poops. She holds it in as long as she can! Even if it means going all day without pooping. She would rather hold it than go on the potty. I don't understand it at all. And I don't know how to help her. The last few days when I know that she has to do and can't hold it anymore I just sit in the bathroom and don't let her leave. I try to make it fun, we're usually in there for at least 30 minutes and I talk to her and try to encourage her. I keep it positive, not like I'm holding her hostage even though in reality I kind of am. Anyway, she'll finally start pooping but not because she's trying to go, it's because she can't hold it anymore. Once she even looked at me with a terrified look on her face and said "I'm pooping!" like she had no control over it and was trying not to. She was on the potty so I was super excited and tried to let her know that it was a good thing and I asked her if she was happy and she so said "no, I'm sad." :( Why would she be sad about pooping on the potty???
Another thing I should add, even though she waits until the poop just comes out, she definitely has control over when she poops. Obviously unless she waits too long. I've basically been watching her like a hawk so when I know she has to go we go to the bathroom. Well, the other day I had to run the trash to the garbage can which is on the side of our house. She walked to the door with me and didn't have her shoes on so I told her she had to stay inside (the ground is HOT in the afternoon!) and asked her to stay by the door. I literally ran the trash out because I was worried she was going to follow me so I wanted to hurry so her feet wouldn't burn and when I got back to the door, less than 30 seconds later, she was gone. I walked inside and yelled "Ashlynn, where are you?" And she came running out of the kitchen and said "I pooped!" She's a smart girl! She knows I watch her closely, she knew this was her chance to poop off of the potty (in her pants) and she took it. Quickly. I already knew she can poop when she needed to but this just confirms it. If she has to go, she can push it out. But for some reason she doesn't want to do any pushing on the potty.
If anybody has any advice or knows why she could be scared to poop on the potty... and why it would make her sad to do so please let me know.
She does perfectly fine with peeing on the potty. I don't even need to ask her anymore, I only ask when I can tell she has to poop. But when she has to pee she'll tell me "have to go potty!" and she'll start running to the bathroom and sure enough every time she sits down, pees, we wash our hands and she's on her way. No issues with pee at all. Which is why I want to keep focusing on the pooping issue. If she was peeing her pants all the time or freaking out about peeing on the potty I would think she wasn't ready and put her back in diapers. There is no turning back now, though. It's a TON of work and I can't let her out of my sight at all but I'm up for it. Hopefully she'll get used to it soon. The last two poops have resulted in her getting a prize (each time it was a new game for her Innotab) which she was SO excited about getting but I can tell she was not excited about pooping in the potty and doesn't plan on doing it next time she has to go unless it just comes out of her while she's sitting on the potty because she's been holding it too long. So prizes aren't motivating her to do. Treat aren't motivating her to go (we've tried bribing her with cupcakes and even candy)... I'm not sure what to do next other than to keep doing what I'm already doing with her which isn't working yet.
Anyway, I need to go through our pictures soon and get some posted!
Sorry for the long rambling blog... probably with a lot of typos! It's late, I'm tired, and I'm always too lazy to proofread but you should be used to that by now.
1 comment:
Holy smokes! You've been moved in for a month already? I do keep checking back often. The backyard was one of the first things I noticed from your photos. You'll love it!
As for Ashlynn, we have the same problem with our grandson, Gavin. I watch closely too but only once got him at the right time to actually sit on the toilet. I keep hoping miracles will happen when he's at his paremt's place but we do have him two to three days a week so a lot of the training is on us. One day he'll get it right. One day he told me he had already pooped and when I asked where, he showed me the place outside. We figured that was a good thing even if it was outside. He had pulled his pants down and up again on his own! The things that make us excited huh?
Post a Comment