Foto Finish Friday

What kind of mother am I? This is the only picture we have from this week. I meant to take one of his new haircut he got today, but it didn't happen before bed. Maybe next week...

Doing Nothing...almost

When I found out a few months ago that I was going to be having 5 days off (our day care provider took a long weekend for her birthday), I decided it would be perfect timing to give potty training another go. "They" say summer is the optimal time for potty training...I'm sure you can guess why, and we had no exciting or out of town plans. This, combined with the fact that he was showing more signs of training readiness; namely hiding from us to produce a #2, then not listening or coming to us when asked to after said production, being more able to dress himself, and more importantly able to undress himself. I was bound and determined to go into it this time with more knowledge and feel more prepared to handle toilet aversion and other potty disasters. I started researching and reading up on the latest and greatest potty training (or to be PC...potty learning) techniques. With each approach I read or heard about, I could find at least 5 reasons why it would NOT work for us. Having attempted this feat once before, I sort of knew what I was up against in terms of cooperation from the little guy. The more I researched, the more I learned how NOT easy it was going to be to potty train a brilliant, stubborn, head strong child. With D-day (or P-day, if you must) growing closer, I splurged on a book, which has given me to most insight into the process. After reading through the pros and cons of the different approaches outlined in the book, I decided to go with the one that I thought would work best for us. The "Do Nothing" approach. Basically, you just let the kid figure it out for himself, on his time, when he's ready. The runner up was the "Have someone else do it" approach (self explanatory).

So now, I've got this time off work in which I would LOVE to train K to use the toilet, but how can I accomplish this in 5 days by doing nothing?? I couldn't exactly just do nothing, but I tried to do very little. If you're interested, here is what I did do:

--A few days of prep work in which we spent long periods of time outside, nakey from the waist down and downing tons of fluids (who knew he'd LOVE grape gatorade?), and talking about what is going on when things start flowing.

--When he "goes", mention how it felt just before and how he should listen to his body when it says it's time to go potty. Only mention, not repeated a million times and tattooed across his forehead.

--Try not to ask him every 10 minutes if he has to "go". This is probably the hardest of all. My tongue is scarred from biting it all weekend, but I think this might have been the best piece of advice gained from reading an entire book about potty training.

--Wait patiently for him say those sweet little words, "I have to go potty".

--Make a potty sticker incentive chart for success in the toilet. (My outdoor prep work got me closer to housebreaking than potty training and K told me that going on the toilet was "not fun", so I had to up the ante for going in the toilet.)

--Stock up on cleaning supplies and laundry detergent...

Now, we're at the end of our 5 day weekend, and I think things are going in the right direction. He's definitely putting it all together, we've only been having about one flooding accident per day. He really has a stronger bladder than I would have ever imagined; yesterday he held it for almost 3.5 hours...before making his deposit in the proper location.

Foto Finish Friday

Givin' the Love Bug some lovin'.

This car belongs to our church's high school group and is on display at our mall during a Back to School Denim drive. It usually sits outside our church and Kai loves to say "HI" to it every Sunday. We happened to be at the mall earlier this week and saw it there, so we just had to say "HI"! I had totally forgotten it was there. (Sorry for the poor picture quality, I took it with my cell phone)

Two years ago today...

We saw this sweet face for the first time...

...And we've been in love ever since.

Foto Finish Friday- Vacation edition

Playing in the beautiful (and not too cold) Pacific Ocean

Walking the cranberry bogs with Grandma and Cousin

Carousel with Daddy

We found a beach we could actually drive our car onto!

It was awesome, and one of the highlights (for me) of our trip.

(I may be a little too easily entertained)

More ocean playing...

No, he's not surrounded by birds...that's sand he was throwing.

Watch out world, he's got a chainsaw!

Being an eagle in the nest at the zoo.

Horsey riding

Train watching

Cupcake eating

I won't go into how hard it was to get a picture

before he tore into that thing. :-)

My son the elephant

They say an elephant never forgets...

We just got back from a fun week on our mini- roadtrip/ "staycation" in Portland. A few conversations between us and our little guy I wanted to share. Sorry if you're tired of hearing me say how amazingly brilliant our son is, but if it bothers you, too bad. It's the honest truth and here's proof:

While in Portland we went to the Oregon Zoo. The last time we were there was in March, I think (so, nearly 5 months ago). On that last trip, Kai fell in love with the foot massage chairs. They're a big plastic bench (like a log maybe?) and you put your feet into areas which massage them. Anyway... we could not keep him off those things. We have not seen or talked about such things since. The second we walk through the front entrance of the zoo, he spots those chairs (from at least 100 feet away, might I add) and starts talking about them and wants to go sit on them. We are totally convinced that he remembered them...from 5 months ago! I didn't even remember them!

Driving around Portland, it's impossible to miss the MAX trains running throughout the city. Of course, Kai noticed these right away because he loves trains. We casually mentioned how we had taken the train out to the airport, but we did not talk about why. (It was last December, for our Family Day celebration). Out of nowhere and completely on his own, Kai says, "Mommy Daddy pick up me at airport". Of course, we have told him his story over and over. How he was born in Korea and we met him at the airport. This is the first time he's repeated it back, without any prompts from us.

This kid has got an amazing brain...I am really getting frightened for what we're up against in 10 years...

Foto Finish Friday

Learning Chinese dancing at the annual agency picnic last weekend.

He was really into this and danced with the girls for a good 15 minutes!

(Which is like a lifetime in 2 yr old time!)