Welcome Home...Books!!!

Before we moved, we needed a plan of attack as to how we would approach moving. Our house was so tiny, that in order to continue to live in our home with boxes packed we needed a place to store the boxes. Outside didn't work as it kept raining. So we turned to our friends.

We're very lucky that we have very nice friends. We're even luckier that our nice friends had a huge and practically empty storage unit in our new community. We asked them to use their unit and they said yes.

My original plan was that once we moved in, I'd take a trip over there every day and pick up a few boxes. But seriously, who was I kidding? I just moved! There was no way I wanted to bring even MORE boxes into our home!

Those boxes are our books.

I finally decided that I needed to stop putting off for tomorrow what I was perfectly capable of doing today. So I got some boxes. I even unpacked them. And though I still have a long way to go, I am so glad to have my books home.

Look how happy my books are to be home!

I obviously have many more books to unpack!

I Found My Kitchen Table!

For the past few days, I've been posting the updates of our toilet training adventures. And while it was incredibly humorous watching my naked son, with his lime green crocs, whizzing past my room all day long on his sister's hot pink scooter, today's post is about me.

I found my kitchen table! While this may be a normal thing for people not be missing, for me it is a huge deal. Since July of 2009 we had been living in a doll house. It was a house so small that it fit the kids toys and not much else. We were completely squished. And while we did move in January 2011, it was to a house the exact same size. Somehow, we were never really able to fit our furniture into these homes. So much so, that we really only opened our folding table when we had company. Normally, we ate on the couch.

You can imagine my delight when we found our new apartment and it had a built in breakfast table in the kitchen.  To me, it meant that we would ALWAYS have a table open -- no matter how much crap we tried to jam into our home.

We moved in almost three weeks ago. It's been slow with the unpacking, and I'm okay with that. But it was really nice when tonight, I finally finished putting away everything from our kitchen table!

Before

After

I am so excited to have breakfast in the morning!

The Adventures of Captain Underpants -- I Mean Captain No-Pants

Day three in our toilet training adventure has come and gone. Actually, it was gone a lot sooner than it should have been as I gave in and put a diaper on too early this afternoon. Though despite my giving in, DS2 definitely learned something today.

We started our day as we have been this week. Wake up, get changed, eat breakfast and then strip my son. As soon as he was in his birthday suit he ran to his potty. Albeit, he only ran there because he knew I'd put his favorite video on for him to watch, but still, he was excited to go there.

I've found that he could stay accident free for a couple of hours, and since I know his schedule, I decided to unpack the house a bit more. This was why I wasn't near him for his accident.

All of a sudden, I heard my son screaming for me, "Mommy!!!!" He ran to me. And while holding and pointing to himself, he said, "Water! There!"

Well, first I started laughing at the image before me. But when I started to calm down, I realized that even though he had an accident, he made huge progress. It was the first time he was conscious of the fact that he had an accident!

Well later in the morning, he came crying to me, "Mommy, come look!" I went with him to look and lo and behold, he had peed in his potty! YAY!!!! Of course, he couldn't get over the fact that he "made a mess" but we'll fix that... When I finally got him to stop crying, he knew the next part was to empty the potty in the bathroom. He wanted to do it himself!

I guess with everything you have to take babysteps.

Toilet Training for Dummies.... I Mean Mommies

I wish each kid would come with their own manual. I'd be so easy to know when to toilet train and how to toilet train. But what I'm doing, is NOT working.

Thankfully, I had a better day overall. I was determined to be optimistic today. So I got up, got dressed and felt good about my appearance and started a load of laundry. I cleaned up the living room and even rearranged some furniture. I finally felt ready for the day and so I undressed my son.

Caution: Speed Bumps Ahead

I started my morning so optimistic. I was totally on a roll. I'm on a great weight-loss streak, I feel good, I got dressed, cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned the living room, got the kids dressed and set off for our day. But as we all know, life never turns out the way we plan. That is the understatement of the year.

And.... We're Off!

My son wanted to watch a movie on my computer. So I sat him down on a regular chair and told him that if he has to pee he needs to use the toilet.

As a precaution, my son decided he was better off just sitting on the potty :-)

Time for Training!

My son is going to be three in a couple of months, and since we were moving to a bigger place, I had pushed off toilet training till now. The fact is, I didn't need much reason to push off toilet training. I hate it. With my older daughter, I pushed it off even longer until my sister finally made me do it one day in her house.

I'm Back and I'm Better than Before

Seven months ago, I had started this blog in the hopes that it would be an extra incentive for me to organize my home. However only a week had passed when our lives had been turned upside down. (See here). Being kicked out of our home, sent to another very temporary home, and still had to find a more permanent place to live, is hard on anyone. But couple that with the fact that we were left with no internet or phone service, and I felt completely isolated and alone.