Bad Poop, Good Poop, and let's not forget Batgirl!

***WARNING THIS IS SOMEWHAT GRAPHIC, but if you’re a mother it probably won’t faze you***

BAD POOP: When SOMEONE (KAITLYN I'M LOOKING IN YOUR DIRECTION) poops in the tub.

OH HOW I HATE POOP IN THE TUB!!!!! First of all it totally ruins the purpose of the bath (I had to usher all the kids into the other tub REAL fast) and then you have to clean it by either fishing it out from the water or letting the water drain and THEN cleaning it OR (I definitely don’t recommend this one) not having time/wanting to clean it up right then so you drain the water and then when you come back to clean the tub it’s all hard and you have to scrape it out. I KNOW!!!! IT’S GROSS!!! YOU’RE TELLING ME?!

So that was this morning before stake conference.

GOOD POOP: When, right after church, Logan comes to me UNPROMPTED with his pants to his ankles, trying to take off his diaper, saying he needs to go potty and then FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER not only PEES BUT POOPS IN THE POTTY!!!!!

I AM STILL DOING A LITTLE JOY DANCE RIGHT THIS SECOND!!!

I still can’t believe it. You see… I knew potty training was coming, but I just couldn't get myself to begin... Potty training is one of the crappiest part of being a mom (no pun intended). I started with Jenna and Carter at age 2.5 and that pretty much failed and then like 2 or 3 months before they turned 3 was the magical age and it went pretty smoothly. BUT if there is a #1 thing I’d like to tell new mothers out there about potty training is: IT IS A PROCESS… it is one setback after another. Like, JUST when you think they are potty trained they go and poop in their underwear without telling you while you are out to eat at a restaurant.  And then they have to learn to either sleep through the night and stay dry or you are waking up in the middle of the night to help them go for weeks. THEN they hit that point where the novelty wears off and they just get lazy and decide that playing is way better than going to the potty and then they wait too long. I mean it is a good few months before you can finally say “YES THEY ARE POTTY TRAINED.” At least in my experience…

So with Logan he is just over 2.5 and I have been like do I try and fail like I did with Jenna and Carter at this age?!!! So I’d ask him if he happened to want to sit on the potty or try out some big boy underwear and where Jenna and Carter were SUPER EXCITED at first, Logan has had no desire AT ALL. In fact he has been VERY adamant about it, giving me a FIRM “NO!” when asked. OKAY. I was not gonna push it. Well last week for the first time he randomly said he wanted to sit on the potty. I was like, sure let’s go practice, see how ya like it. I didn’t get my hopes up. I know better. So he sits for awhile, says he is done (nothing happened) and I even put underwear on him and a little while later find the wet underwear thrown in some corner. OKAY that didn’t work. SO TODAY?!! He goes POOP AND PEE?!!!! I am so excited I can’t stand it, and yet this is only the very beginning.  SIGH.  He has been running around in underwear and we shall see what happens next. The other thing about potty training is: IT IS A COMMITMENT. You just can’t be lazy about it, that just makes it worse cause you end up going back and forth between underwear and diapers and that is just confusing for them.  Yeah more and more I am learning once you start with underwear it is a commitment and DON’T go back to diapers, (not even pull-ups they are just glorified diapers).  I've heard you should just throw all the diapers away so you won’t be tempted, but I have never been able to do that cause I usually have had 2 in diapers… such is my life.  ANYWAY I know that today it is starting and I have to be committed. So. I’ll let you know how it goes…

(I was so excited to document I didn't even wipe his nose.)

 
WELL on a COMPLETELY UNRELATED note...
 
Is the world ready for... BATGIRL AND ROBIN?!!!! (yes I am a big dork judge me all you want!!)
 
TO THE BAT CAVE!
 

 
Naomi and I ran a Halloween/charity 5k for fun and YES IT WAS FUN!!!  It was so fun getting into character with Naomi, I just love her.  At the end we had this whole plan where she would say "Batgirl don't let the joker get away!" and then we'd SPRINT.  The only prob with that is yeah I sprinted... but SHE LIKE FLEW!!!!  I could not keep up with her.  That's cause she's awesome.   Now the only thing that woulda made it better is if we hadn't MISSED THE COSTUME CONTEST by 5 minutes!!!!!!  DANG IT!!!!  Well.  We won in our minds.  Whatever.  I'm not bitter they started it earlier than they said.  Not at all.  :) :)
 
Okay and there ends my post on poo and running.

Parties, parades, programs, pumpkin walk, ooooh alliteration!

I LOVE HALLOWEEN.  I love the fall.  The dressing up.  The candy. THE PUMPKINS!  The trick or treating.  I have always loved it all, even the scary side.  But I have found that as I get older I don't like the "Scary" aspects of Halloween as much... or maybe it is cause that has faded away as we got more and more kids and it became more about FUN than SCARY.  I think I'd still love to go to a haunted house... we just haven't for a few years... but even a scary movie, I have become kind of a wimp.  Nate and I talked about watching "The Ring" again, but I am not sure I can do it!  Sheesh what happened to me.  BUT that said... the "fun" part of Halloween is SO much fun with kids.  I LOVE IT!  Yesterday the kindergarteners got to dress up for their Halloween party and then they had a parade around the school.  I got to help with the party and it was a blast.

Here is her cute class.

Jenna and her teacher.

Halloween parade.

My cute little witch.

Then we headed to Carter's preschool to watch his little Halloween parade.

Handsome Batman!

They did an adorable little Halloween program.  Carter's been singing the songs for weeks.

Mrs. Lisa



My mommy.  Doesn't she look like she could be their mom?  I am hoping to age exactly like her.

THat night we headed to the pumpkin walk.  I love this tradition and seeing all the cool carved pumpkins.  The layout was SO much better this year, I was skeptical when I heard there would be NO line but it was true!  We got right in and out.  Which was good cause it was getting SO COLD I was FREEZING!

So the flash was off... and that is why this picture looks so creepy.

We got warm by the fire... then guess who we saw???

Pretty cool.

Now tomorrow is my day to dress up.  I signed up for a Halloween 5k with my friend Naomi and we are gonna make quite the team.... I am excited!

How not to talk to your child about natural disasters

So Carter started asking about volcanoes the other night because he saw a volcano on a cartoon he was watching. Nate was like, “Oh you don’t need to worry about volcanoes, they are all far away from us! The only thing that would happen to us is an earthquake.”

NICE. That opened up a whole long discussion of what earthquakes are and how we don’t need to be scared cause it might not happen, but then again it might, we just need to be prepared… oh man once we got started the deeper it got and the more I was thinking to myself “oh shoot, shouldn’t have said THAT” and Carter is crying, tears rolling down his face, because we scared him so much!!!!! YEAH WE ARE AWFUL PARENTS!!!! I mean how do you explain this to a 4-year-old? We taught the kids how to protect themselves in an earthquake by getting under the table or stand in a doorway (I mean IS this still the protocol?!!!) because things will be shaking and breaking and falling down. SO THEN he tearfully asks, “So when our house breaks is it going to be fixed?” and I say, “Yeah it will be fixed!” He goes , “But that will take a long time!” and has another fit of tears and I say, “Carter, even if our house breaks, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is our family. If we are all together that is more important than any of our things.” He thinks for a second, then asks, “But will Addie’s house break too?” I say, “Probably all the houses by us will break. But it will be okay. EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY! I would come and find all you guys and protect you. And we’ll hold hands like this.” That made him calm down a little.

I mean how do you explain bad things to kids without freaking them out?? So far my record is terrible, because a few months ago when we talked about strangers we ended up the same way, with Carter so upset that he is just crying, asking me, “But why will a stranger take me away?” and I’m like “A stranger is not going to take you away!!! But… sometimes people are bad and might try...”  AH what am I SAYING! He says, “But I don’t want a stranger to take me away!” “Carter nobody’s gonna take you away! But… JUST IN CASE, this is what you do…” That conversation did not go well either.

It’s something we all have to learn I guess… like I wrote about recently, we can’t live our lives in fear, right? We somehow have to live for the best while preparing for the worst. I guess!!!!

It WAS funny though, after Carter stopped crying about the earthquakes, he started asking countless questions about them. Stuff like:

“Do earthquakes break beds?” “Yeah they can break beds, they can break lots of things.”

“And our clothes? We would need to get new clothes?” “Yeah we would get new clothes.”

“Is there an earthquake that could break all the houses in the world?” “No, they only hit certain places in the world.” “Oh. Cause we can’t fix all the houses in the world, huh.” Sure… So we explain that sometimes there are big earthquakes and sometimes there are little earthquakes.

Then he asks, “Can I step on a little one?” “A little what? An earthquake??” “Yeah if it is little, then I can step on it.” Ha ha at this point I am like okay I did not explain this very well, did I? I’d love to get in his head and see him squishing that big, bad earthquake like a bug.

THEN he asks, “Do earthquakes melt?” “Uhhhh melt?? Nooo, they don’t melt… ” “Then how do they go away?” “Well they just shake the earth and then go away.” “Oh, like they go down the sidewalk?” Yes it just rolls on down the sidewalk. Um I didn't want to get into plate tectonics, but maybe I needed to!  It was pretty funny.

I’d just show him “The Land Before Time” and call it good, but I’m afraid that will just freak him out again, don’t you think?? Maybe we’ll just avoid the subject for awhile... and I shall brush up on my parent-child-communication skills about Important Things cause right now they are pretty poor.

Changed for the better? It's all in perspective.

One thing about being a mom... actually about growing up in general… it really has freed me from caring what people think all the time.

You see, I found myself at the mall last week.

With 4 kids.

Wearing the shirt I wore the day before.

And the same mascara that I slept in.

And the same deodorant.

And the Salt Lake Marathon ball cap from 2004 that I have worn 8000 times since then to hide my hair.

Unbrushed teeth.

And I didn’t care.

(I am losing friends right now, aren’t I.)

I KNOW!!!!! DO I HAVE NO SHAME?!!!!!

I was at the mall pretty much the way I rolled out of bed!!!

My high school self would be pretty horrified.

You see, I thought I’d take the kids to the park that morning and after getting them all dressed I was too tired to get myself ready and come on it’s just the park. But then Nate wanted to meet for lunch after so we decided on the food court for fun and I went straight there.

And that's why a bunch of dirty, ratty, damp kids (the slides were all wet) and their sorry looking momma were among upkept, fashionable, cute mall-goers.

I mean what are appearances to me?? Nothing I tell you!

Yep, I’m pretty proud of myself that I didn’t even care. Well, 98% didn’t care.

Somewhere in the other 2% was the fear that I’d run into someone I knew.

Hey I’m not perfect…

Because also at church yesterday I wore a long skirt with slits up the sides and when I got to church I realized I forgot to shave my legs and they were EMBARRASSINGLY hairy and apparently I do have shame when it comes to hairy legs cause I died at the thought that anyone would see and tried to walk and sit so those slits wouldn’t fly open and man that was awkward.

It’s a good thing my kids won’t remember my hairy legs or the way I smell. They’ll just remember the good times, right?

Some park excursions:

 

Pink and purple gloves. 

Jenna and Carter learned how to cross bars all by themselves, they were excited.  Nice undies.

 

Lagoon!

When BYU fans flock to a blog with "Diapers" in the title

So when I logged onto site meter yesterday I nearly choked on my own spit. HOLY CRAP I could not believe the number of hits!!!! I was like, this has to be about the BYU post… ANNNND it was. My bro-in-law (thanks, Tim) apparently put a link to it on Twitter and it was re-tweeted a few times, hence the incredibly high traffic to my humble blog. I had to create a twitter account to see for myself. Apparently this guy Jeff Chatman is very well known among BYU fans and he tweeted, “Oh no, do we have another Michelle Perralta on our hands?” Nate couldn’t believe that Jeff Chatman linked to my blog… but cringed when he heard the name Michelle Perralta.... soooooo I guess she is infamous for writing an article on how people are too obsessed with Jimmer, and well, we all know how blasphemous THAT is!!!!! So I’d just like to point out that I am NOT a hater… CLEARLY in that letter I was only looking out for the welfare of my husband.


Yeah, for the record:

I LOVE JIMMER!!!!!  I went to the BYU versus San Diego State game OF MY OWN free will (with the promise of Firehouse Subs) and actually experienced something amazing… I think the word is “fun.” Some of my icy sports heart melted that day.

Oh yeah and the family picture in red?  Momentary lapse in judgment, we will all be wearing matching blue sweatshirts next time, don't you worry!

Not that I have to explain myself.

Something called the Big 12 that actually only has 10 teams (as I was just informed yesterday) now THAT needs explaining. 

Dear BYU Sports Administration:

This letter has been a long time coming.

Dear BYU Sports Administration:

I come to you as a desperate wife, pleading on behalf of my husband.

Do you have any idea what you have put me through over the last few months???

Look I don’t know much. I don’t even watch football. But if I have to watch Nate go through this sports PMS or WHATEVER you want to call it any more I will come after you.

Yes the emotional highs and lows are taking a toll on my true blue husband who in one moment is threatening to swear you guys off forever, FOREVER! And then the next minute he is telling me, FOR THE BILLIONTH TIME, that he just KNOWS something great is about to happen and he waits around and waits around for a big announcement that INEVITIBLY NEVER comes!!!! WHY DO YOU LEAD HIM ON!!!! WHY must you play with his heart and act like it is nothing, I mean, at least be honest and let him truly know where this relationship is going!!!

If it goes well with this BIG 12 thing then Nate will surely celebrate it as a groundbreaking day in history, he will probably jump up and down lots, it will probably be bigger than Christmas.

And while I have never understood his passion, if this goes the OTHER way, a part of him would certainly shrivel away into nothingness, which means a part of me would die too.

While it would be nice not to have to pretend to listen when he talks to me about football or act mildly interested when he wants to show me cool sports clips, I have a feeling I would be lost in life if you guys were to ruin his feelings about BYU football… I mean it took this long for me to perfect the “yes I am listening but I don’t really care” and “this is my pretend excited voice about something I don’t quite understand or really try to” and my “Awww I am sorry they lost, Nate!” voice and to throw that all away would be a shame!!!! I have become a pretty good shallow supporter of Nate’s football obsession!!

And if this part of his life were ruined because YOU made STUPID decisions and PURPOSELY DID NOT go for the Big 12 well then I will have to hear about it for the rest of my life.

Kind of like how I have to hear about how George Lucas ruined the new Star Wars movies. And as much fun as THAT is... I am already bracing myself.

So really. Get your act together. Come out and say stuff so Nate doesn’t have to live off of rumors generated in the media or from Cougarboard.com. This rollercoaster of emotion is almost more than I can bear. Be independent, fine, but don’t get his hopes up you are going to join the Big 12. THAT IS JUST CRUEL!!!!

(And while you're at it if you could explain to me again exactly what the Big 12 is, I would much appreciate it.  Oh, yes, Nate has informed me of what is going on, and yet I still am not sure. But I DO know it is Big. And there are 12 of them.)

Sincerely,

The Football Wife.
http://nateanderikagomm.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-am-football-wife.html

(If you are unsure what I am talking about, this video might help... "Hitler Finds Out BYU Isn't In the Big 12" it is pretty hilarious.)

I AM a good mom, I AM a good mom...

I think us moms deserve way more appreciation and praise than we get. Wouldn't it be nice if we had someone giving us nice words of encouragement throughout the day instead of getting down on ourselves for stupid things??  I think it would really go far.  For example, I could have really used these words today:

“GOOD JOB, Erika, you did the dishes!! I am so proud of you!"

“You washed your hair today, keep it up, girlfriend!”

“Way to fold one load of laundry today!! YOU ROCK! Don’t even WORRY about the other seven loads!!!!"

“Clean kitchen floors are SOOOOOOO overrated!!!”

“You walked from the kitchen to your bedroom without tripping on any toys, who's awesome, YOU'RE awesome!"

“Hot dogs for dinner? Mmmm!!! That sounds so yummy and nutritious!!!”

“OH yeah way to throw that child in time out, they deserved it, you're such a GOOD MOM!"

"You DEFINITELY should sneak that Kit-Kat you have hidden in the pantry, you deserve it!!! In fact grab 3 or 4!!!"

"You REALLY know how to change a diaper!!! There is no greater measure of success, really!!"

“Way to get caught up on all those notifications on facebook! You are so ambitious!”

“You mother with such grace and poise!!!”

“You look really pretty when you’re about to LOSE IT!"

“That ginormous zit by your nose is REALLY workin for you!!!”

“You just won a vacation for two to Hawaii!!!!”

(I have a really really good shoulder angel.)

The Farm and Hair... ? yeah that doesn't go together

Carter's preschool went to the farm on a field trip.  Nate went too and they had a ball.  I like this video of Logan going down the slide, it looks pretty rough.  He is the one after the person in the red shirt.

 

My cute Kaitlyn.

Jenna got 4 inches taken off her hair.  It needed it bad.  Not too noticeable but I think it looks much better.

Before.

I changed my hair too. 

Before.

Now.

It's different!!  But I really like it!!