Potty!

We can proudly say that tomorrow we will begin day 5 of Aiden being potty trained during the day (minus one small accident - :^)). This has been a LONG time coming and we're so happy!

We knew to begin with that boys take about twice as long as girls do to potty train, but Aiden was a difficult case. He really never showed any interest whatsoever. But even with his lack of interest, we were doing fairly well and were almost to this point in March, but then John got laid off and everything fell apart. My hours immediately skyrocketed to nearly 40 each week and the potty training got shoved to the side....back in diapers he went!

But I knew that once I started this new job and I'd be home a little more, I'd get him right back into it. And it has been a great week! We woke up on Tuesday and I put him right into regular underpants and told him that we don't go pee and poo in regular underpants like we do in diapers. I spent the rest of the day asking him if he needed to go potty and he would either say "no" or "yes" and when he said yes, he would go successfully. He's even started going in and sitting on the potty without any prompting from me. We've done that every day so far and we only had the one accident this evening when he went to go play outside and forgot to tell me that he had to go.

I cannot tell you how happy and relieved I am that we have finally gotten to this point! I was beginning to feel like he'd be in college and still in diapers. It was causing a bit of stress because he's supposed to be mostly potty trained by the time school starts in one month and I thought there was no way that was going to happen - but he's proving me wrong! :^)

Of course maybe all he needed was for me to go out and spend $$ on a potty training book and then stock up on boxes of pull-ups. No joke, I just bought two huge boxes of pull-ups on Saturday because they were marked down to $16 and I figured that we'd use them, so I might as well buy them. We haven't used any since Monday! Go Aiden!!

103 Degrees

Do they look warm or what?

Poor things. We have a little window AC unit, but 103 is a big number for a little unit to keep up with. It's too hot to do anything but sit and watch TV and it's too hot to cook, so dinner is PB & J sandwiches. These boys are going to be super cranky by the end of the week!

Just to catch up

I've slacked a bit over the past week or two on blogging, but we've been extremely busy. And stressed. But I won't go into most of that.

Aiden had the opportunity to go to not one, but two of his school's summer day camps and oh my goodness, he had a blast! So that's where he's been for the past two weeks. The first one was Splash Camp and they spent all week playing in huge inflatable pools (they even had one that was equipped with two levels and a slide!), slip'n'slides, sprinklers, and making lots of artwork with squirty water paints (most of his clothes are slightly discolored now). The 2nd week was Art By Heart Camp and it was all about making art work with different materials. We never actually got to see what he made because John got sick and I had to work on the evening of their "art show". He had so much fun, he's on the waitlist for the 2nd phase of Splash Camp, so he may end up with a total of three day camp weeks this summer! Lucky boy... It was a little rough on everyone, as he had to be there by 9:30am and he doesn't usually wake up until 9 or so. Both he and Nathan got a little sleep deprived and now they have colds. But I think it was all worth it for him to head back to school for a while.
A couple funny things from the camp weeks: One of the teachers there is named Anastassia, but they called her Teacher Stassi. Apparently, Aiden has a little trouble with that. So he calls her "Teacher Bossy". She thinks it's hilarious - I'm happy she's not offended!
He also really picked up on positive reinforcement while at school this time around. After a day or two, he was complimenting everything we did. I drove him to school one morning and as we pull into the parking lot, he says "Wow mommy, that was great driving!". Ok then. One of the other teachers told me that he kept doing it after every song or game that they played - "Wow, that was a great song!". Keep up the good attitude, Aiden!

Another thing that kept us busy was a visit from my dad. He got to spend Friday through Tuesday with us! The boys had a fantastic time. Aiden was very clear about calling him 'Grandpa Major' and Nathan began calling him 'Papi' right from the beginning. I found it interesting that Nathan found his own way to differentiate from my dad and John's dad - he calls John's dad "Papa" and now my dad is "Papi". We had a great time visiting with him and the boys were very upset when he had to leave. After we got home, Nathan would occasionally call out, "Papi, where are you?". It was so sad!

On the busy side of things, there's also work. These past two weeks have been quite rough and they definitely got as much work out of me as was physically possible. Today was my last day and it was bittersweet. As ready as I was to go home, it felt strange knowing that I wouldn't be going back again (at least as an associate). I know that I'm excited to have a new job experience, but that excitement is currently being overshadowed by some fear. Have I made the right decision? Will I fit in with my new co-workers? I miss my Payless co-workers already!! I guess I can breathe easy knowing that my Payless manager told me I could just call her if I wanted to come back to work there.

We have some work news for John. He was called back this past week to work on a project that will take around 6-8 weeks. They are hoping for more projects to open up while he's there (and right now it seems fairly likely), which would open the door for him to be back permanently. This did make it difficult with me still being on a full-time schedule at Payless for this week, and I won't tell you that we made it through all the stress smoothly, but I'm done with Payless and my new job should just be evenings and weekends from now on. Hopefully the stress levels can lower a bit for a while.

Now that you're basically caught up, I'm going to relax on the couch for a while with a bottle of pain killers. Somehow, I ended up pulling a muscle in my neck (OW!!) and have not been able to look upwards or turn my head to the right all day. It made for a very interesting last day of work! I made the mistake of mentioning it to someone at work, who then proceeded to tell me that they did that a few months ago and it didn't heal for weeks!! I guess they wanted to give me something to look forward to. :^)

And the kitchen sink

Apparently Nathan has developed a bit of an obsession with our kitchen sink.

I was letting Nathan play with my cell phone yesterday, as I typically do since I can lock it, and after a while we put him down for a nap. A little while later, I decide to do the dishes. Nearly done with the dishes, I take the mixing bowl full of old brownie batter water and dump it out.....and out comes my phone. It had been in there for about an hour. Needless to say, it was toast.

Since my cell phone is the number I give most people and the only way for work to get ahold of me, it needed to be replaced pronto. We live right by a Verizon Wireless location and so I went right over to talk to them, bringing my brownie water soaked phone with me in a ziplock bag.
Lucky for me, I was eligible for a phone upgrade and was able to get a very nice new phone for just $20 after my upgrade rebate. They didn't want to touch the water-logged phone (go figure), so everything on the phone is gone and can't be retrieved.

While I'm very happy with my shiny new phone, I was a tiny bit annoyed at my tiny boy. But his obsession with the sink has a bright side. This evening after dinner, I got him down out of his highchair and he went around and picked up all of the dishes he had tossed on the floor. He then took them, one by one, and put them in the sink! He's so small, so he has to stand on tippy toes to barely get them pushed over the edge. It was so adorable and it almost makes the whole situation the day before totally worth it. :^)

Job News

We have job news! But it's for me, not for John.

I've been having some trouble at work lately and feeling extremely overworked, underpaid, and certainly under-appreciated. For a few weeks, I'd been coming home very sore and one day it was so bad, my knees had swollen and I could barely lift my arms anymore. Payless is a very, very physical place to work! I'd also been yelled at a few times for things going wrong that weren't even my fault. The issue is that I'm there most of the time and since I'm being evaluated for the assistant position, I'm the one who takes the brunt of any blame now. Coming home crying a few days in a row isn't a good thing.

So I called my old manager (the one who left Payless a few weeks ago to pursue a better job) just to chat about my frustrations. She told me that I needed to come see her at her new job and so this past Monday, I went. She had me fill out an application while I was there and after I left, she gave it to the hiring manager and apparently told her some things about me (a little worrisome when you don't know what's being said!). The hiring manager called me the next day and asked if I could come in to meet with her. I headed over on Friday to meet with her and we had a nice little talk. She actually had us sit outside on a bench instead of in her office!

I told her about myself for about 10 minutes and she told me how Debra had actually mentioned me from day one, so she knew a lot about me already (again, a little scary). Then she suddenly asks me, "So when do you want to start?". I was a little taken aback, but told her that I could give me two weeks notice the next day. She told me to go ahead and do that and that she would start me out just below $10 an hour "for now", but there's an assistant position opening up soon and she would love to watch me to see if I'd be a good fit!

So I suddenly have a new job in Bridgeport Village at Coldwater Creek, which will give me better hours to spend with my family, plus one guaranteed weekend off per month, and a raise in pay right off the bat. I gave my two weeks notice on Friday, basically right after the interview and my last day at Payless will be the 25th.

I'm so excited and while this is very unexpected and unplanned, I feel like it's the right thing to do. The only problem is that I'm going to have a little bit of trouble staying focused at work until then. I'm not going to have to deal with people's stinky feet anymore or shoes being tossed on the ground willy-nilly or tons of little kids running around and screaming and messing everything up!! I'm so ready for this.

Early Intervention

We had Aiden's Early Intervention appointment this afternoon and honestly, I should have trusted my motherly instinct and canceled the appointment. It was horrible.
We sat in a very clinical looking room for 3 hours while they interviewed us and gave Aiden all sorts of tests. By the end of the appointment, I was close to tears and Aiden was screaming and crying, "I want to go home!!!".

At first, it started out looking like it was going to be a pretty quick appointment. They looked over the paperwork that I filled out and asked us some questions, then said that they didn't see any real reason to be concerned about any delay. Good news. But then they decided that they wanted to do about five different standardized tests (plus a hearing test) on Aiden - just to "make sure". This is when it went downhill.

The woman giving Aiden the tests (she was a speech pathologist), started asking Aiden all of these questions about pictures and actions. When he wouldn't answer, she would raise her voice at him and say, "No! You need to answer me now!". When he would then completely refuse to answer any questions (by very forcefully saying, "NO!" - good for him for standing up for himself), she would mark the question she had just asked him as a failure to understand to the question. There was no way to differentiate on the scoring between failure to process and refusing to comply.
While this woman was yelling at my child, the other specialist was interviewing John and I. She was asking us all sorts of questions about Aiden's ability to follow instructions. We gave our honest opinion that he can follow instructions perfectly - when he wants to.

After this, they wanted to give him a hearing test. Aiden flipped out when they came into the room with this device with a bunch of wires protruding from it, wanting to stick it in his ear. Since he wouldn't comply with this, they wanted us to come back next week. When I told them that I didn't have my schedule for next week and didn't have the same days off each week so we didn't know what day would work quite yet, they just kept asking what day we wanted to come in. Because we couldn't get them to knock it off with the rescheduling and they were pushing this hearing test, we ended up holding Aiden down to administer it. I regret doing that now. Aiden was screaming in terror the whole time and I felt like an awful mother for putting him through that. After we got home, I noticed that the woman had totally scratched up the inside of his right ear.

After all that, they came back in with their test results. They insisted to us that through all the testing, he had shown "severe developmental delays" in communication and that he needed treatment through their program. When we asked how they came to this conclusion after initially believing that there was no delay, they told us that it was because of his inability to answer the speech pathologist questions and also due to our answering that he couldn't follow direction.

This is where I'm really frustrated. We did NOT say that he couldn't follow direction. We said that he followed direction just fine, except when he was acting like a normal three year old (not to mention acting like his dad!) and ignoring us. They either didn't listen to us or completely twisted our words to create a problem that's just not there.
Also, I refuse to believe that woman's test scores. Lack of cooperation from a three year old during a standardized test being given by a woman who is shouting at the child doesn't equal inability to understand and process the questions. We gave him those same questions at home from the at-home test that they sent us and he answered them just fine.

I got a little upset during the meeting at this point and flat out told the speech pathologist that one of the questions she had marked as "unable to do", I had asked him to do right after she left the room and he did it immediately. She insisted to me that while he may do it all the time at home, if she didn't see it, that means he is unable to process that question.

They tried to get us to sign a consent form for treatment right then, but we told them that we needed to think about it. We have talked about it and have decided to decline treatment at this time.

I feel like what we told them was totally ignored. I feel like they took his unwillingness to participate (while being yelled at) as a sign that there must be a problem. They created a problem where there isn't one. I just don't understand how they can go from complimenting his clear speaking style and telling me that there's no visible problem to insisting that he has a severe delay.
My son does not have a "severe delay" in communication. Those of you who have recently had a conversation with him probably knew that already! I don't know many other three year olds who can correctly pronounce "pachycephalosaurus". A child who has a severe communication delay cannot have a 15 minute conversation (complete with full, clear sentences with correct grammar and pronunciation) with me about different types of trains, railroad crossings, and shipping containers - among MANY subjects that we regularly talk about together.

Once we got home, I was totally upset and immediately burst into tears. Of course, having gone into work at 5am this morning after four hours of sleep probably didn't help the situation. But even with that, I'm just sort of shocked at how the whole thing went. I went in hoping for the best and I left feeling like I'd spent three hours traumatizing my child for no real reason. I'm sure other people have had great success with early intervention, but so far, we are not impressed.

Walking Trails

The weather has been great - maybe a little on the too-warm side, but very sunny and beautiful. Because it's supposed to start raining again in the next day or so, I wanted to take advantage of my day off and go for a nice walk with my family. There happens to be the Rock Creek Trail just a short drive down the road from us and we hadn't checked it out yet, so that was our goal for the day.

We packed a small lunch to take with us and hit the trail. It's a fairly long, paved trail and shaded just enough to make it pleasant. Aiden was a little disappointed, as the Hillsboro Parks and Rec website said there would be ducks and herons, but we didn't see any.

We ate our lunch on a bench halfway through our walk and had an enjoyable couple of hours. The boys wanted to stay in the double stroller the whole time and they spent most of the walk pointing things out to each other and making each other laugh. It was pretty cute. Towards the end of the walk, Aiden leans over to Nathan and gives Nathan's head a big hug and says, "You're the best family ever, baby". So sweet!

I had some Baskin Robbins gift certificates from Mother's Day last year, so we decided that would be a nice treat for all of us. We enjoyed our cones and Nathan proceeded to get very sticky indeed. But that's when the afternoon began to go downhill. I had developed a slight headache partway through our walk (I was probably just a little dehydrated) and it wasn't feeling like it was close to getting any better. We left Baskin Robbins and Nathan wanted to walk to the car. Well, he didn't have any shoes on and I wasn't about to let my (nearly)18 month old walk on the hot pavement with bare feet. So he was carried and that made him really mad. As he was buckled into the car, he launched into a HUGE tantrum, screaming and shrieking the whole drive home. In the 5 minutes it took us to get from Baskin Robbins to our apartment, my headache turned into a full migraine. I had to take some migraine meds (which always give me a rapid heartbeat and an upset stomach) and sit in a hot shower for 20 minutes while the meds kicked in. Then I spent the rest of the evening in my room with my head wrapped in a towel to keep most of the light and sound out. So much for a full day with my family.

I was feeling well enough to spend about 30 minutes with the boys and help get them in bed. But we did definitely wear them out today, as they went totally silent 15 minutes later.

I still feel a little disappointed about having to shut myself away for most of the evening, but I very much enjoyed my day off. I'm spending the rest of tonight relaxing to finish getting over the remnants of the migraine, so the destruction of toys, shoes, and DVD cases that were tossed all over our living room will wait until tomorrow.

Some Projects

I decided to do a few projects to have a little bit of stress-relieving creativity time. These are things that I would have done if we had moved into that house we were planning on buying, but I figured that we deserve to have some cute creative things for our apartment (which IS our home, as sad as it sometimes feels) and so I went for it.

I've been enjoying my trips over to Michael's Crafts, which is just two minutes from our apartment. I do need to limit myself though - I can see things getting out of hand! I enjoy the unfinished wood section and have found many cute things.

My first little project was a place for the boys to hang their jackets and backpacks. Sadly, I have yet to take a picture of the finished product, but this is it in progress. Aiden helped with most of the painting. We are doing the base color in purple and the little knobs are now black. Once the little crevices where the base coat missed are filled in and we get it hung up, I'll share a picture.


I've been wanting some sort of hanging name plates for the boys' bedroom door and wanted to keep them individual. Aiden's theme as a baby was Jungle/Zoo and Nathan's was Ocean/Aquarium. So I found these great little unfinished wooden bases, along with unfinished wooden letters and some wooden animals. I painted them and just wood glued them all together. It was super easy and I love the way that they look.