Potty Training In the Works!

After a rough first day of potty training, I'll have to say I've seen huge improvements! Friday looked a lot like Thursday...lots of accidents and so it seemed, very little progress. On Saturday we pretty much didn't train at all because we had unexpected family stuff all day so I decided today we would start fresh and hit it hard. We started right when Braden got up and put him on the potty every 20-30 minutes the entire day! It was exhausting but the final count was....drum roll please....6 pee pees on the potty (hallelujah) and 4 accidents! I'm feeling pretty good about the day. He certainly knows what is going on now and he is telling us when he needs to go. His accidents happened when he told us a bit too late and he was beginning to go. All in all though, it was a good day!! :) Now, if only I can get him to poop on the potty. I'm afraid he's holding it in. Thanks for all of the good potty advice!! We're gettng closer! :)

"Potty (lack of) Training"

Today was Day 1 of potty training and I'll give it about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. :) Let's just say, I would love to choke Dr. Phil and all of these people that have potty training in a day literature! Really?!??! Seriously, because we must need the potty training for dummies version because we are nowhere close to being trained. Ha! Braden was willing to sit on the potty for long periods of time which was a plus, but he just couldn't manage to go while he was on. After sitting for 20ish minutes each time, he would then pee within 5 minutes of getting up and having undies on. :) I tried to put him on every 30 minutes, offered lots of drinks, rewards, you name it...Do you see Barney wearing underwear? I tried it all today. So needless to say, I spent most of the day washing underwear and cleaning up the floor. Oh well, tomorrow is another day and I'm hoping we have a little success. He did go one time on the potty (while watching Cars of course) but he had flipped off the little penis guard when I wasn't watching so it just went on the floor in front of him. Poor little guy...we'll keep trying. If any of you expert mommies have advice, please help. :)

Coming right along....

The playground is almost finished! Chris worked on it all day long yesterday! We had a few visitors stop by to give him a hand which was helpful. :) Matt brought Jace so he and Braden got to try out the swings and glider while the guys were still building. It looks like it's going to be a hit.

Little video of Braden enjoying the swing.

More building and horses

Today we got to go to Churchill downs to see the horses. Our friends Matt & Carrie asked us to go because they had some free box seats inside in the air conditioning. Then we could just pop outside to see the races. We thought it might be fun to head over there with the kids and let them see the horses. Well......we did have a good time but we spent most of the day nagging Braden to "sit down, come back, get off of that, not over there, put that down" etc....If only Super Nanny could have seen us. She would have begged us to be featured on her next episode. All in all it was fun though, and it was a great day to see the horses run.



This picture pretty much says it all! This is Braden trying to escape for his life and Chris' face shows how much fun he was having with him!


ahhh...One sweet moment

After we got home, Chris went back to work on the swingset. This time, he had a little help. Braden was LOVING the tape measurer. Maybe I should have brought one to the track. Ha!

Busy Saturday!

We had a fun filled family day on Saturday. We started off the morning hitting a few neighborhood yard sales. This is starting to become a hit with us and I think Chris' parents are rubbing off on us! :) This week we found a sand table with a lid for $2, a shopping cart for preschool for $2, several cars and toys, and the best find was this junior golf set. It was $10 and came with drivers, a putter, a nice bag, and the bag even stands up! Too cute. Chris was so excited about his find that he thought he'd start practicing with the next Tiger Woods (ha!) right away.

Then we headed to the strawberry festival for a bit and on to Huber's for lunch. Braden always loves sitting on the fake animal outside of the restaurant.

After Huber's, we came home to begin sorting the playground equipment. I would say, "some assembly required!" OH MY!!!!!!! It took Chris and I about 2 hours just to get everything out of the boxes and into piles and then another 2 hours to label each pile. I would have quit at that point so good thing Chris is into this stuff. Then he began building.

Small group

On Friday night we had our old small group over. We don't get together consistently anymore so it's always nice when we can get our growing families together for dinner. When we started the group, no one had kids yet and now we have 3 kiddos and a few on the way. :) Braden had a good time playing with Jayla and Caleb. I wouldn't say he was loving the sharing business, but he was loving the company! :)

Playground Time!

Chris and I have been looking at playgrounds for a few months now. We had kind of decided on the huge one at Sam's Club before this weekend. Then Chris thought our yard really wasn't big enough for the giant swingset plus part of the yard is uneven so we were undecided again. Chris' mom called us last night and said that there was one partially out of the box playset at the entrance to the Jeff. Meijers and that it was marked down because of this. Being the bargain hunters that we are (Chris more than me :) we headed up there to check it out. Are you ready for this deal? Well all of the playgrounds were on sale for 25% off. Then, since this was partially out of the box it was marked down an additional 10%. Chris told me he was going to go "talk him down even more" since he knew they wanted to get rid of it. At this point I was embarrassed and took off for another section of the store!!! Needless to say, Chris offered the Meijer's manager $500 and the guy said ok! Who knew? So does this mean I should negotiate my frozen pizzas during my shopping trips?!?!? Nahhhh! Anyways, then he opened a Meijers credit card (which is so not like Chris but he was liking the deals) to get an additional 10% off. SOOOO, our $800 dollar playset ended up costing $450!!! How's that for a bargain? :) Here is a picture of it from the store....of course it will be many days and many hours before our one million pieces look like this, but all in all Braden will love it! Come over and play with us soon!

Mother's Day

Happy late Mother's Day to all of you awesome mommies out there! I had a wonderful Mother's Day. I got to go home Thursday and Friday and see my mom and family and celebrate a little Mother's Day with them. Then Saturday, we went out to eat with Chris' mom to celebrate with her. :) Sunday we went to church, went out for lunch, planted flowers around our house, and took a huge nap! It was the perfect day. To top it off, Chris said he would cook dinner and made one of my favorites...kabobs on the grill. It was a very fun day being with my two favorite guys (oh, actually 3...Baby Noble :). Oh, one more thing. Chris got me an i phone for Mother's Day and I LOVE IT!!!!! It sure is nice being a mom now....one extra holiday for presents-ha ha!!!!! Just kidding. :)

The deadly dentist! :)

Today was Braden's first visit to the dentist. We knew it would be a rough one but thought we needed to go. We had also heard they would actually clean his teeth even though he was only 2...even with the screaming and squirming. Poor guy! I knew he'd be so upset as soon as he had to lay down on his back. At least when he was screaming his mouth was open and she was super fast at cleaning. I couldn't really get many pictures because it took all 3 of us to hold him down. It must be custom around there because the lady didn't flinch and the girl in the next room was screaming too! Can you imagine working all day with screaming kids? Oh wait, I do!
Ha ha!

First laying down..."no daddy, no daddy." :(

You can see how red and puffyhis eyes are from crying

He just looks smooshed here!

All better! The cleaning was over and he got to pick out a toothbrush, a sticker, and two prizes. Look at his hair and the sweat from crying. Poor guy!

BIG boy bed!

After two days last week of Braden crawling out of his crib for his naps and bedtime, we thought it was probably a good sign that our GIGANTIC child needed his big boy bed. Honestly, I am surprised we made it this long! He could have been crawling out a year ago as tall as he is. I was curious how Braden would handle the new bed so I let him play on it the whole day before with his new sports sheets. He seemed very excited, but somehow that changed when the lights went out for bedtime (duh!). He was scared and needless to say my pregnant behind squeezed in beside him for night 1 until he fell asleep. On night 2, Chris stayed in the room on the floor until he zonked out. By night 3 he had it! Shwooo!! What a relief. He has now taken two naps and went to bed 2 nights on his own with no problem. He has slept both mornings until 8:00 and has called for us to come get him ("Mommy Up"). I'm crossing my fingers that potty training goes as smoothly. Ha ha ha!

Taking down the crib with Braden's inspection on hand

Moving the twin bed into his room

Checking things out

Lights out. :)