Wait a Minute!

(Cross Posted for the most part.)

I think someone stole my winter break. Seriously. It's gone. I want it back, thank you very much. I wasn't done with it yet! (sniff, sniff)

Sadly, my time home with the boys is over. It's back to work tomorrow for me. Boo. We did a lot this winter break.

• We visited with family and friends.
• We "crafted" ourselves crazy. (We didn't even finish everything I had for us to do. I already have a list of activities for next year. lol)
• We went to doctor and therapy appointments. (6 of them in total)
• Everyone got shots. :-(
• We saw Santa.
• We opened presents and played with new toys.
• We stayed in our pjs until late in the day several times!
• We played outside and ran in fear from the ferocious squirrels in the backyard.

We had a lot of fun!

I did, however, have two main goals* that I wanted to accomplish before vacation ended. True to form, I waited until the very last possible moment before we started on them.

First, I wanted to finally bite the bullet and potty train Ja.son. (My plan has always been to divide and conquer--get Ja.son to potty train and know figure hope pray that Sh.awn will likely follow suit shortly.) If you know me on Facebook**, you saw updates like this:

Day 2 of "Justpeeonthepottyandnotinyourpantsforheaven'ssake" has been a success. 2 accidents yesterday. 1 accident this morning (didn't get to the potty in time after waking up). I anticipate an even better day tomorrow! December 30 @ 10:23 pm

Little did I know that Day 3 would be even worse. Yikes. Let me just say that I think I may be forever scarred by what I found in his pants that day. (shudder)

But, I am finally happy to say that Ja.son has been in undies with zero accidents for two days in a row now. We're talking 24 hours a day, all day, all night dry. Whoot! Sure, I still occasionally hear the dreaded, "It's not fair!" when I remind him to go, but he does most of it on his own. Dare I say he's finally been "trained"? We shall see. Of course tonight should be interesting as he "couldn't" go potty before bed. Sigh. I'm a bit afraid to say he is potty trained because my kids like to go out of their way to keep me on my toes. (Where did they get that from?)

My second goal for the vacation was a lot harder to get through than I imagined as evidenced by the following Facebook updates:

And for giggles, today is Day 1 of "Idon'tknowwhereyourpaciis,youmusthavelostitsogotosleepwithoutit." This should make for a fun experience. (Don't judge. Everyone has a vice or two. Ahem.) December 30 @ 10:23 pm

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Only took him two hours to go to sleep tonight without the paci, but he did it! Here's hoping tomorrow goes just as well. December 30 @ 11:50 pm

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S: "I want my paci, mommy."

M: "You lost it, buddy."

S: "Oh, I'm sorry, mommy...I don't know what to doooooooo, I don't know what to doooooooo!"

Cue the mommy guilt. I'm pretty hard core when it comes to doing what needs to be done, but taking away this stupid paci stuff is hurting my heart! January 1 @ 5:43 pm

---and a bit later---

This is day three...I told him he must have lost the paci and he apologizes to me about losing it. Sigh. I keep hoping the end of him asking for it is near... He's fine at night once he finally gets to sleep. Naps haven't been going well though (and man does this boy need a daily nap). @ 6:21 pm

Ugh. Getting Sh.awn off the paci is torture for us both! He hasn't been napping well at all, which has translated to some not so great evenings, too.

Finally now on day 4, I saw a glimmer of hope when he went to bed tonight and didn't ask for the paci even though he had asked for it a few hours before.

Dare I say it? He didn't ask for the paci tonight. (He did this afternoon but not tonight.) The farthest he would go is, "I think I forgot something..." I'd just sort of cut him off before he could get to the end of that thought.


Hallelujah! January 2 @ 9:50 pm

Fingers crossed that tomorrow he won't ask for his paci at all.

Whew.

Now that I am writing it all out, we really did do a lot. Hm. I think that means I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation!

*We did get started on cleaning out the garage today. I dropped the boys off at my mom's and we both worked on it. I'd say we made a really decent dent in all the work, but there is a considerable amount of work left to do. I suspect I'll end up finishing, but at least he started with me, right?

Two thoughts while we are working: 1)Where did all this crap come from? How can we possibly have this much junk? Jeez. I thought I did a decent job of getting rid of stuff that we don't need/use/want but apparently not. (I am struggling to get rid of the baby stuff, though. I just can't bring myself to do it yet.) 2) Toy manufacturers use an OBSCENE amount of packaging for their toys. Seriously, you don't need that much cardboard and plastic to protect a piece of plastic. Man. I think we spent over an hour breaking down boxes from the various toys/baby goods items we have received over the year. (Yes, it would be easier to manage if we did it as we got the shit in the first place, but I am lazy like that. Ahem.)

**If you don't know me on Facebook, why don't you already? Come on. I'm nice. Really. :-)