Things fall through

Well, I've just been informed that we can no longer live in the house that we were going to live in when we moved to Utah.  It is now 12 days until the girls and I are flying out there.

I'm not really sure why, not because the reasons aren't valid, just because at this point I'm only getting 3rd hand accounts and no one really seems to know what is going on.

The most upsetting thing to me is kissing all those awesome plans to fix up that house and yard good bye.  I had so much to do that I was looking forward to.  Deep breath... I'm letting it go.

Luckily, Will is making a bit more money than we had anticipated, so paying rent will be doable.  We found out about an hour and a half or two hours ago, and we already have leads on a few places, all of which have yards (which I've decided is a requirement).  So we will no longer be living in Bountiful, and our search is once again directed to the helpfully vague "somewhere between Provo and Salt Lake," which may be upgraded to "somewhere between Spanish Fork and Salt Lake."  We shall see.  In the meantime, your thoughts and prayers are appreciated.  I'll keep you posted.

What's New.

Hello all,

I just wanted to let everyone know what's going on.  The girls and I have an official date to leave: May 17th!  Yay!  We're staying here long enough to sell a bunch of stuff (hopefully) at the neighborhood garage sale (remember, May 13th and 14th, 9am-4pm in Jefferson Farms... tell your friends!) then leaving OH the evening of the 14th to head to Chicago for my cousin's baby shower.  Then on Tuesday, the 17th, we'll fly out of Chicago to SLC.  The tickets have been bought.  This thing is official. We should be able to afford to move everything else out there in July sometime.  It means a few weeks of sleeping on an air mattress, but it will be worth it to be with Will again!

In other news, Joci has picked up another word, "kitty."  Yes, it sounds more like "zzzgh-dii" at the moment, but she says it consistently says it while pointing at the cats, so we know that's what it means.  Fun times.  She's also pulling up on stuff all the time, not quite cruising yet, but soon!

I have to say, my time alone with the girls has been... difficult.  Pretty much all my fears of becoming the Worst Mother Ever have been confirmed, since I feel like I'm spending all my time yelling at my kids.  Yeah.  I'm trying to work on it.  And it doesn't help that literally every day above 65 degrees here has meant severe thunderstorms for the past month, and that big, fat bumblebees have taken up residence somewhere on our deck, so I can't let Chaela outside to run off any of her energy.  Ugh.

Happy First Birthday, Jocelyn Eve!

Today my baby turns one.  We already celebrated, since we wanted to do that before Will left for Utah, but I have a gift that I made for her, so she'll get something.  Since I've never posted about Joci's acheivements, I wanted to do that, as well.

Joci, at one year old you:

-Can talk, and have been talking for just over a month.  Your first word was "Hi!"  You can also say "Uh-oh," "Dad," "Mama," and "Hi, dad!" (which she says to everyone, not just will... I'm pretty sure she thinks this is a longer version of "hi.")
- You shake your head 'no' and can sign 'all done.'  You don't point, but you reach for things you want.  If I ask you if you want to go to bed, and you do, you reach towards your bedroom.
-You and your sister play constantly, and I have high hopes for you being best friends.  She takes toys from you every five seconds, which I do my best to stop.  You used to just let her, but lately you've been screaming your infamous banshee scream any time she tries, and you've started snatching toys from her.  Not sure if this is good or bad.
-You can pull up on the table/let yourself back down, and army crawl.  You show no interest in actual crawling, and you don't walk yet.  I'm not really surprised, since you didn't care even to be held in a standing position until after you were six months old.  But, you're making progress!
-You are obsessed with electronics (a true daughter to your father) and if you see my cell phone or iPod and I don't give it to you, you banshee scream in my ear.
-Speaking of that banshee scream, you do that ALL THE TIME when you don't get your way, especially if someone won't give you something you want, usually food or electronics.  I'm surprised I don't have any hearing loss.
-Because you don't walk or have much hair, because you're little, and probably  because you're my second baby, I feel like you're much younger than you actually are.
-Everyone agrees that you look exactly like your sister, and everyone loves your smile; it completely lights up your entire baby face!  You're my beautiful little girl.
-You and I already fight about what you wear, as you absolutely refuse to wear headbands.  I put them on you anyway, then make you keep them on all day.  You probably miss your dad, because he would take them off of you when I wasn't looking and hide them from me.
-You love music, especially relaxing music.  Your dad plays Enya for you on his iPhone to get you to go to sleep.  You love it when I sing to you, and you almost always start 'singing,' too.

There's so much more I could say about you, but I should probably get you, since you're standing there banshee screaming at me.  I can already tell you're intelligent, beautiful, cheerful, and stubborn.  I'm so happy you're part of our family.  We love you!  Happy birthday, baby girl!

Day One

Well, as I've announced on Facebook, we're moving to Utah.  It's kind of complicated, because we don't have enough money right now to move like normal people.  So here are the steps to our plan, for those of you who are curious:

1) Will takes a car full of stuff (computer, electronics, etc.) and goes to Utah to work for an old boss doing road construction while staying with a friend.
2) a. Will works and makes enough money for us to move our stuff and looks for an apartment.
    b.The girls and I stay in Ohio and I try not to be the Worst Mother Ever.  I also go through our stuff and get ready for the Jefferson Farms neighborhood garage sale (May 13th and 14th, EVERYONE TELL YOUR FRIENDS!) then pack whatever is left.
3) When we have all the money we need, Will finds an apartment.
4) Here in OH, we rent the largest U-Haul trailer available, cram it with all of our stuff, then pack my dad's SUV to bursting and haul everything, including myself and the girls, out to Utah.  This (fingers crossed) happens around the beginning of June.

So, that's the plan.  Will should be in Utah sometime tomorrow in the early afternoon, and I'll still be here.  Sigh.  I'm glad that I have more time with my parents and with the Young Women I work with at church, but at the same time, I wonder how I'll cope without Will to remind me every few minutes that there's no reason to be cranky all the time.  So far I'm doing ok, but we went to church right after he left and Joci's been sleeping since we got home, so when she wakes up the real test will begin.

Aside from selling pretty much everything extra we own and packing, there are a few things I'd like to accomplish while Will is gone.  I'm hoping to have a little more time to work on my book, and maybe pick back up on my weight loss.

I feel bad for my girls.  I don't know if they really understand what's happening.  Chaela has already asked about 50 times where her daddy is.  We did try to explain it to her, but I don't think she gets it.  Thank goodness for modern technology, though.  Chaela and I have already talked to Will on the phone once and we're planning on skyping often.  I'm so glad I can at least see his face and hear his voice, and this small, one-time separation is nothing like what military families go through. 

More Books

Hey everyone,

I've been reading a lot again instead of writing as much as I should (even though I have a feeling I'll be starting again soon), and I've stumbled on a few authors in the YA fantasy/romance genre I feel I can recommend.  So if you're someone who asks me which books they should read (meaning, if you're my sister Lindsay) this post is for you!

Bree Despain - The Dark Divine (series)
Kind of typical, but with a few interesting twists that I won't give away.  The reason I'm recommending this series is because the female protagonist didn't get on my nerves (my main problem with this genre) and, as most of my readers that I'm aware of are LDS, these books are very clean.  Bonus: the female lead is also religious, so she faces a lot of moral quandaries that are glossed over or ignored in other YA books.  And she has a family who remains present throughout, so not only is she dealing with the normal, "Oh, I'm in LOVE!" stuff, but family issues as well.  When it comes to family, most YA fantasy/romance books use an easy way out by saying the main character is an orphan/only only child/in the foster system/their parents are kidnapped/they are kidnapped/they have a broken home and hate their parents/they go to an enchanted boarding school, etc.  I like that she kept it in, and that the relationships felt real.  It did incredible things for fleshing out her protagonist.

Alex Flinn - Beastly and A Kiss in Time
I have to admit, I read (well, listened to, it was an audiobook) Beastly because my mom and I saw the movie and I was curious.  The book is better than the movie.  In fact, as I was listening to it/playing Angry Birds, I kept thinking to myself, "Why did they change that?  Why didn't they include that?!" over and over again.  Let's just say the movie was a shiny, high school version of a dark, much more interesting book with an action-packed ending (as opposed to, SPOILER: Oh, no, I came outside and the whole SCHOOL can see my UGLY! wekisstheend).  The entire book was told from the perspective of the Beast, which is way more emotionally fraught than Beauty's story and probably what made it so fascinating to me.  All in all, a good read, or listen.  The movie, which was fine when I saw it, is now kind of a let-down, because they could have made it so much better.  There was some cheesiness, but over all, good.
I read A Kiss in Time because I liked Beastly.  I read them both in one day.  Now, I don't know if Kiss is as deep as Beastly, but it was fun and entertaining and I still enjoyed it a lot.  It's more of a romantic comedy.
Alex Flinn also has several other books out, but they're not in this genre, so I haven't gotten to them yet.  Currently I'm very narrow-minded.

Let me know if you've read anything good lately!

Lessons from the Potty War

I know I posted a long time ago about the difficulties we'd had potty training Chaela.  What many of you don't know is that, up until a few days ago, we were still having problems.  At almost 3 and 1/2 and after over a year of attempting to potty train, Chaela was officially considered "delayed of resistant" (as diagnosed by the internet). 

Over Christmas and up until I went back to work at the very end of January, she seemed to be doing alright.  Then work started, and everything crashed and burned.  She was going through upwards of six pairs of pants per day some days.  Not only is that annoying and a pain to clean, but she just doesn't have enough clothing to be doing that, because I'm not a 'laundry-every-other-day' kind of mom to begin with.

We tried several things, from anger and punishment to reward her for good behavior to every combination in between.  Nothing changed.  Work ended, and I thought that might be enough to get her back on track, but it wasn't.  It didn't matter what we did or didn't do, or how we talked to her about it, or how we reacted to her accidents, she just kept having them.

I couldn't take it anymore.  Well, no, I was way past that.  I felt hopeless.  So I sat down at the computer and did a google search for "potty trained kids having accidents" (or something like that).  The search got a ton of hits.  Yay!  I'm not alone!

There are several reasons why a child might be resistant to potty training, but as I went down the lists on several websites, one reason stood out over and over again:

"Most children who are resistant to toilet training are enmeshed in a power struggle with their parents. The cause of the power struggle is usually reminder resistance – an oppositional response to excessive reminders to sit on the toilet. In addition, most resistant children have been held on the toilet against their will. Many children have also been lectured too much, and some have been spanked or punished in other ways for not cooperating. Many parents make these mistakes, especially if they have a strong-willed child. Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament." (Quoted text taken from a pediatrician's website)

All of this sounded familiar.  Yes, we had constantly reminded Chaela to go to the potty, we had lectured her, forced her to sit on the potty against her will (in our defense, it was because she was dancing and holding herself, and she DID go), and yes, she'd been spanked for accidents.  The last part sounded especially familiar: "Most children who are delayed in toilet training have a difficult, strong-willed temperament."

"Holy crap, that's us!" I thought.  I eagerly scrolled down, excited that this was a real problem other people were having, and with high expectations for the solution.  Imagine my shock when every website I looked at basically said that the solution to potty-training a strong willed child was to stop potty-training them.

What?

I laughed out loud at the first site that told me that, but then the next place I looked said the same thing.  Then the next, and the next, and the next.  Stop.  Stop bothering your child.  Stop reminding them to go.  Stop asking them.  Stop reacting when they had an accident.  And absolutely under no circumstances should they be punished.

So we stopped.  I had one last, very brief talk with Chaela.

"Ok, honey.  We're done.  Mommy and daddy are done telling you to go to the potty.  If you need to go potty, you're in charge.  And you're in charge of changing your own panties.  And if you have an accident, we'll help you clean up, but you'll have to do that, too."

The first thing that happened surprised me.  I felt a change.  I felt like a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders.  No, she wasn't potty trained, but it was no longer my problem, or my fault.  It was her issue to deal with (and in my opinion, Chaela is both old enough and smart enough to do so, so while I did feel some guilt initially, it didn't last).  The best thing that came of this was that I was no longer angry when she had an accident.  If she came to me with wet pants, I could just shrug and tell her to go put them in the laundry basket and put on clean ones.  This was a huge deal, because sometimes I scared myself with how angry I would get at her for having accidents.  Now I wasn't angry, because it wasn't my fault.

Then something else happened that surprised me.  IT WORKED.  After only about a week of Chaela being in charge of her own potty-training, she's pretty much stopped having wet panties.  It used to be that even when her pants were dry, her panties were a little bit wet.  Not anymore.  For the past two days, she's had almost completely dry panties.  Hallelujah.

Anyway, this is a huge long blog post about something most other people probably won't care about, but I wanted to post it, just in case anyone else goes through something similar in the future (I know a lot of my friends have kids that will be potty training soon).  But I also wanted to get this out there because talking, or writing, as the case may be, allows me to crystallize my thoughts, and this taught me something important about Chaela, and about motherhood.

I can't control her.  Even now, Chaela is not a complacent, obedient child.  I can only assume that as she gets older, her stubbornness will grow.  I can't punish it out of her, and I can't positively reinforce it out of her.  If Chaela ever does anything, it is expressly because she decided it was a good idea.  I'm so worried about dealing with her as a teenager, and I'm glad I had this experience, because I think it will help me. 

I have to teach her correct principles, and then (the hardest thing I'll ever have to do) let her govern herself.  I have to trust her, and I need her to trust me.  She won't ever trust me if all I ever do is punish her, so I have to back off on the unimportant things and choose my battles wisely.  I have to let her do her own thing, even when it seems completely counter intuitive (like with potty training, where my instinct was to force her to sit on the potty more often, remind her more often, etc.).  I have to trust that she's smart enough to do things on her own.  All this, of course, taking into account her age and her safety.  I am a control freak when it comes to my kids, so this is going to be difficult for me.

Parenting is hard.

Weight Loss 2011: Weeks 11 and 12

Well, I'll be honest... I didn't post last week because I totally fell off the wagon.  I regained a pound.  However, this week I am down 1.5 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 12 pounds.  I'm right where I'm supposed to be, but my "safety" pounds are gone.  Scary, because from this point on I'll actually have to work to meet my goals.  Sigh.  Effort is hard.

Weight Loss 2011: Weeks 5-10

So, I haven't posted a weight loss update since I started work, but now that I'm finished, I have no excuse.  I'm happy to report that I have managed to lose 4 more pounds.  It's not as good as it should be, but it's not as bad as I'd feared.  I'm still just barely managing to stay ahead of my goal, with my 11th week starting on Monday and my total weight loss at 11.5 pounds.

I'm pretty excited.  I think when I reach my half-way mark (21 pounds lost) I'm going to do something special for myself, like by a new shirt or something.  Hopefully now that I'm not working, controlling my eating habits will be easier again.

Pants-on-the-ground: A Chaela Story

A funny thing happened a week or two ago when our home teachers came for their monthly visit (home teachers are just guys who go to our church who are assigned to check in with our family once a month, visit, make sure we're doing good, etc.). 

We were sitting there, talking (as Mormons do... a lot) when Chaela ran in with one of her dolls, a Cabbage Patch knock-off in a purple outfit.

"Is this your doll?" Ben, one of our home teachers, asked.
"Yeah!" Chaela screaked (a scream/squeak, I just now invented the word).
"What's her name?"
"PANTS-ON-THE-GROUND!"
All the adults in the room looked at each other.
"Pants on the ground?"
"YEAH!" Chaela screaked again, then started to sing, "Pants on the ground, pants on the ground!  You look like a fool with your pants on the ground!"

That doll is still called Pants-on-the-ground.  It's the first thing she's ever named.

That really happened.  The end.

A Learning Experience

Only seven days of OGT tutoring left, thank goodness.  I have to say that this time I've learned a lot more from the kids I tutor than they did from me... the question is: did I really want to know?

I know a lot of this stuff was going on when I was in high school, too, but not in my world.  Does every generation freak out this much about the upcoming youth?  This is the first time I've been old enough to worry about it.

There's a lot I'd like to say that I don't really feel is right to put on a blog.  Most of the kids I like and/or worry about, but some of them...  ajk;laldifjaoirenf!  That's how frustrated I am; there are not even words.

Anyways, this is part of the reason my plan to be an author/hermit is so important; authors don't have to interact with other people on a regular basis.

: P