Yawn

**Warning Potty Training Talk Follows**

So over the last month or so I decided NOT to push the potty training with Demand because chances are high she might revert once baby is born. So what happens? Saturday Demand announces to me that she has to "tinkle" and goes to the bathroom and pees. I then find out she did the same for Mr. Sloth earlier in the day. A fluke? Perhaps, but she's gone 8 times in the last twenty-four hours and almost always at her prompting.

Ok then. Perhaps she's ready afterall. And today she not only peed but went #2 (she hasn't done that on the potty in months) AND she went on the potty at Church too. Which means going on a cold big toilet. While it's really impressive that she had no problem going at Church, in reality it is where she has Bible Study so once a week she sees other kids going potty in the same bathroom, so it's not completely unfamiliar to her.

A funny story about her going at Church. It was after communion and Demand was standing between Mr. Sloth and the side aisle. He turned to me and said she needed to use the potty. Luckily we always sit near the front so we scooted out quietly. As we got in the bathroom there were two other little ones in the bathroom so she seemed excited. We get in the stall and she looks at me and says, "I tinkle, get sucker??". I tell her yes, and then she peed. Mr. Sloth and I just found it funny show she seemed to be negotiating the process. I was nervous about the sucker bit, because she'd have to wait until after Mass. Well I opened the bathroom door, saw the choir walk by and realized Mass was over. Huh. Good timing!

Later today Demand headed to Grandma and Grandpa's while Mr. Sloth and I headed to a Bradley Method refresher class (birthing class). Just to clarify this is something we chose to do, our doctor and hospital aren't making us do take a class. It was nice even if only to make having a baby more of a reality and see our old instructor again. Our instructor was actually at Demands birth so it brought back some memories. The downside to this refresher class is that it has reminded Mr. Sloth of all the things I should/shouldn't be doing when he's been out of the loop for the last 8 months. Rats! So now he's all "don't eat that" and "you should be sitting like this", so there goes all my fun for the next four weeks.

I'll backtrack a bit and tell you about my Saturday, wait Friday. Long story short Mr. Sloth didn't get home until 1:30am. I rarely fall asleep without him so it was a late night for me but to top things off I woke up at 3am. I woke up, woke up. I wasn't uncomfortable or anything, I just wasn't sleepy. I headed downstairs for a few hours of TV. Demand woke up at 5am and even though it was Mr. Sloth's morning, I was up so I got her. It was too early to let her wake up so I changed her diaper and took her into our room. With the choice of getting up with her or letting her sleep in bed, Mr. Sloth threw back the covers and welcomed his sleepy daughter.

I went back downstairs.

Around 6:15am I fell asleep. At 6:45am I heard rustling upstairs and decided to reclaim my side of the bed. I slept for forty-five minutes while the rested duo had breakfast downstairs. My big plans for the morning involved an early morning breakfast with friends so my nap had to be short. The crazy part was I still wasn't that tired and never was that whole day.

After breakfast at Panera Bread me and the ladies headed out for some baby shopping. I didn't need anything at the maternity clothing store but it was nice to browse. I did get a few things at TakeYourMoneyRUs though. Almost everything I got was on my list to buy, with the exception of purchase. A new diaper bag. And it. Is. Fantastic!!!

One purchase we are excited to try out is the swing. Not just any swing. It's basically a frame where you place the carseat and it swings the baby's carseat. You've all seen the parents swinging their baby's 80 pound carseat around desperately trying to get them to sleep. We can't wait to try it! I still need Mr. Sloth to fetch me the carseat out of the garage and I need to clean all of our equipment covers, but until then Demand thinks the swing is for her baby doll and keeps asking me to take it out of the box.

So I guess that summarizes our weekend. I of course woke up this morning feeling the effects of not sleeping the day before and being a Sunday (and a mother) I couldn't just sleep in.

You can bet your tushy I had coffee though. And baby loved it.

Crazy Friday Night

Well I brought this on myself. I demanded (wonder where Demand gets it) Mr. Sloth make a 'Baby Brew" beer for me for when baby arrives and I jump back on the wagon. He agreed it should be done, he just lost track of time. So basically he had to do it this weekend which means tonight. And since we don't have a "heated garage" he had to do it at a friends house, so I'm left to put Demand to bed and stay home alone all night.

Well played Mr. Sloth!

I tried to be positive and say I would get a lot of work done while he was gone, and I could be right, maybe I will. I just highly doubt it. Demand just went to bed. It's 8:30pm and Demand doesn't seem thrilled with the idea. I'm exhausted and have been all day so unless I get some unexpected and naturally induced energy, I have a feeling on this couch I shall remain for the night.

The good news is that tomorrow is my morning off. I have big plans too. Me and the ladies are going to have breakfast at Panera and do some baby shopping. I won't say who but one of them just announced a pregnancy of their own so we thought it would be a fun morning. And I honestly do need to hit the baby stores, with five, gasp, four weeks to go we are in desperate need of baby stuff.

Mr. Sloth and I haven't discussed the afternoon plans but I think they might involve cleaning the garage. Then he's making Enchiladas for dinner which I'm excited about since I've never made them myself. I think that's about it for our weekend plans.


Hope baby doesn't come early....

Dreaming

Let's just assume that from now on I will mostly be speaking of new baby preparations. Agreed?

Either nesting has kicked in earlier with this baby or this baby is coming much earlier than planned. Even though the last two afternoons I've put cleaning and organizing on hold to spend time with Demand, I somehow found myself completely reorganizing my pantry yesterday. The worst part is that I wasn't satisfied with it. Demand seemed to enjoy it though. I found Christmas M&Ms which she tested for me, she got to rediscover her baby bottles (which she insisted were "Mines".)I hope someday they discover the chemical reaction that occurs in women that stirs up such desires of cleaning. Imagine the price you could put on that bottle of pills!!!

One of my main housekeeping goals before baby comes is to completely clean my kitchen floor. About once a week I clean the area in front of the garage door because I get so sick of stepping on tiny pebbles that are left behind after the muddy snow melts everywhere. The mopping usually stops there though.


I of course have big plans for this afternoon, but I suspect that about twenty-minutes from now my body will get over it's current sugar rush due to the orange pop I just drank and remember it's carry and growing a human child. I will then rush Demand through our nap time routine so I can stumble into our room and crash for a nap myself. I will then spend the next 30-45 minutes, not sleeping, but getting in and out of bed to tell Demand to get BACK into bed and/or change an inevitable poopy diaper that occurs in the middle of nap time almost daily.

IF she falls asleep (Which did not happen yesterday resulting in a very crabby me who decided to deal with exhaustion by telling Demand "No, because you didn't nap" to every single request.)If she falls asleep, I'll then tell myself "Just twenty minutes" at least three times before finally getting up and realizing either everything I planned on doing during nap time would wake Demand or I just don't feel like doing it and choose to eat junk food and watch TV until I finally get the energy and motivation to do something and five minutes into that activity Demand wakes up.

That's actually a pretty good and honest summary of the nap process around here. Once in a while the stars aline and I don't nap but start working right away AND Demand takes an extra long nap, allowing of course for more work to get done, but I usually end up doing too much on those days and realize how tired I am just as Demand is waking up.

So, my big afternoon plans involve cleaning the kitchen (stop me if you've heard this), folding laundry (that I still need to dry), plan meals and groceries for next week using a super tight budget, and if possible to keep both eye lids open, read.

Wish me luck!

Operation Baby

Let's see if I can remember what all has happened during the last week or so.

Demand got a tooth! Crazy huh? I thought I saw two tooth buds a few weeks ago but it was hard to tell and I thought she was done getting teeth. Last Friday morning I was brushing her teeth and realized that there were more teeth than the previous day. That would explain her crabbiness, exhaustion and late night/early morning awakenings. Looks like one on the other side is about ready to surface as well. (Sigh) who needs sleep anyway. It's not like I'm having a baby in a few weeks.

Speaking of which, every day Mr. Sloth and I are more and more convinced that this baby will make an early arrival. Saturday night I had some contractions and such. It was Mr. Sloth who decided they were contractions. Since Demand started her entrance by breaking my water first, I don't recall these early type of contractions (although Mr. Sloth insists that I had them with Demand as well.) With contractions and general uncomfortableness (It's a word) I'm ready for baby to come. The heartburn/ reflux has started, I can't really complain though because I had it the entire time I was pregnant with Demand. Besides, it's making me drink more milk.

Since I waited until after Christmas to prepare for baby the clock is really ticking. Last week I resorted all the baby clothes and pulled out the cloth diapers and neutral baby stuff. He babies bed is already out and set up since I babysat a nine month old two weeks ago. The Sloths made a preliminary trip to TakeYourMoneyRUs (Remember that store?) to decided on a few things. Since this baby is born at the opposite time of year we need a few things to, well, winterize baby.

We decided to try out double strollers while we were there even though I have no plans to buy one until spring (and quite honestly I don't know if one will fit in our lovely Saturn Sedan). We had Demand sit in them while we pushed them around. The one Mr. Sloth and I liked (both price and style) Demand insisted was "too small".Whatever that means. Either way it's the first opinion we've ever heard her express.


Next on my baby to do list is making a bunch of meals for the freezer and washing and putting away baby clothes and diapers. Mr. Sloth and I have decided to get a babysitter the next two Sundays so we can cook and clean. One week we'll do all the freezer cooking and the other week we'll clean the garage. I've already planned the menu and shopping list for cooking so we might do that this Sunday provided we can find a sitter. I decided to clean the garage too because Mr. Sloth grumbles every time we enter or leave the garage. I can partly understand his frustration. It's supposed to be his space, but we don't have a basement and since we'll hopefully be moving within the next year he doesn't want to do any improvements. So I thought at least a good clean up of the garage could make a difference.

Speaking of moving. We've been thinking about it more seriously. Mr. Sloth has made it a goal to be able to move in the spring. We'll be starting a Novena to St. Joseph soon. Since it's going to take a miracle to allow us to move, we figured we start out asking for one before *needing* one. Besides, had we put St. Joe in charge of our home in the first place we wouldn't be needing his help right now, right?

Between baby coming and wanting to move we're working extra hard on our finances. I started reading a personal finance book last night which always motivates me to make better decisions about my money. As far as the average American family goes, we're not doing too bad and there are definitely things we're grateful for. We completely own the one car we have and we have no credit card debt. The only debt we have is college debt and my MRS degree was worth every penny of interest. ;) Every time we make a mortgage payment on time I am extremely grateful. That said, there are still other areas where we could make better decisions.

Well that's about it around here. We're mostly just in 'baby mode and/or money making mode'. I better wrap this up as nap time is quickly approaching and I promised Demand I would play Dora games online with her first.

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!!

This morning I woke up to see that it had snowed just a little last night. Not enough to shovel, but enough to make the ground look pretty again (we had patches of grass yet mounds of snow, icky looking!)After getting to bed late and trying to get up early (and failing) I took Demand to gymnastics this morning, again there were some flurries but nothing to get excited about.

After class I had to brush off part of the car,but still nothing exciting. Then I heard the forecast. We could get anywhere from 1-8 inches! It all seemed to stop by the time we came home for lunch but it's definitely a heavy snow now. I'm enjoying the snow much more than I did last week. We left a day early for Christmas travels to try and beat "the big storm". We left Monday night and drove half way no problem. (Mr. Sloth has a different opinion seeing as he was the one driving from 7:30pm-11:30pm) We took our time in the morning. After the worst continental breakfast, Demand and I took a swim at the hotel pool. Now I enjoy swimming but swimming in a hotel pool that is surrounded only by glass during a snowstorm....that's a cold experience, and since I wouldn't have time to dry my hair before hitting the road again, I wasn't about to go all the way in to get warm. Demand had a blast though, and she was very good about getting out of the pool when we were done especially since we weren't in there very long.

It took twice as long to drive the final two hours of the trip than under normal weather conditions, but most of that was our own fault. We took a detour to get the food we wanted and ended up detouring for over an hour. Eh, it was an adventure.


Christmas itself was great. We ended up sitting in the front row at Christmas Eve Mass because the Church was almost full when we got there. I wasn't sure if it was reserved for the handicapped or not, but the way I saw it, no one in their right mind would kick a pregnant woman out of her seat on Christmas Eve. That's just bad taste!!
And get this, Demand fell asleep right as Mass started, and slept the entire time! While we wish she could have enjoyed the Mass more, it was for the best, she hadn't napped all day and we were headed to a party right after Mass that would go late.

Santa Claus of course dropped off gifts for Miss Demand. She was after all a good girl this year. The night before, we kept trying to bribe her into bed, telling her she'd have presents in the morning. Well she already saw a hundred gifts under the tree, (she assumed all of them had her name on them) why couldn't she just have them? Sure enough the first words out of her mouth the next morning were, "Presents?". In all honestly she's quite boring at this gift opening business. It took her over half an hour just to open her stocking. It then took her over an hour to open her gifts from Santa. Sometimes she would get bored trying to open them and just walk away.

There was about a two hour lull before the rest of the family came over to open gifts. We cleaned up the mess and put away most of the toys which didn't matter anyway since Demand had already went back to Grandma and Papas toys. When the rest of the family got there and we started to pass out gifts, Demand got overwhelmed. She truly has Mr. Sloth's personality. Surrounded by gifts and semi-familiar people Demand turned to me and asked, "Dora?". She wanted to watch TV. Mr. Sloth had her rest in the back room and watch TV while the rest of us open gifts. It wasn't until after dinner that we convinced her to open her last few gifts. And I do mean we had to convince her.

We stayed one more day before heading home. Demand seemed surprisingly ready to leave Grandma and Papas. She kept running around the house saying "Road trip! C'mon Momma lets go!" Her only concern was that the new gifts all come home as well.

The weather coming home was actually worse. We thought we'd hit ice the second half of the trip, but as it turns out we had very thick fog the first half of the trip which is really scary. Luckily though we were with a pack of cars most of the time and never had to worry if there was a car we didn't see in front of us or a car behind who didn't see US. When we got to the point where we expected ice we found it was the clearest roads and view we'd had all week! No ice, no fog, nothing. It was smooth sailing.

When we got home we Mr. Sloth unpacked the car right away and I headed to the store to pick up dinner. While I was gone Mr. Sloth unpacked everything. It was so nice. The last few trips I've been taking a trip from FLYlady and the first thing I do, before even taking my shoes off, is completely empty the suitcases and start a load of laundry. I literally walk in the door with dirty laundry in hand (we keep it separate as we go) and start a load of laundry. Half the time Demand isn't even out of the car yet! Well Mr. Sloth caught on to me doing this after the last few trips and loves it. We hate having half empty suitcases laying around for a week. And there's nothing worse than being in the middle of a shower only to realize you haven't unpacked your toiletries yet. Mr. Sloth did a great job unpacking. It was hard to tell with Demands new toys and gifts scattered all throughout the upstairs,but I truly noticed the next day when I realized my black boots were on the shelf in the closet and not in the suitcase. Impressive Mr. Sloth!!


Demand is down for an early nap today. I think she's fighting something. She hasn't been sleeping well and after noticing that she was super crabby at an earlier time than usual I decided to try for an early nap. She fell asleep in record time. Fantastic! Now if she can only stay asleep for a few more hours and get the rest she needs.

More Snow

Today is my morning off. There's a most gorgeous snow fall outside and I have very little planned. As soon as I remove myself from the couch I'm going to start making some fudge and truffles for Christmas. I may read if I have time later, but we'll see.

Mr. Sloth took Demand, first to the Fitness Center, and then to a make-up gymnastics class. She was so cute leaving in her purple sweat suit.

Yesterday, we had a sledding playdate here. Demand had so much fun. She hadn't been too eager to get in the snow before yesterday, but I knew her friend with all her bravery would help Demand get excited. I barely had to do much work. She walked up and down the hill on her own, even slid down on her bottom a few times saying, "Momma, I'm sliding!". She helped her friend build a fort for a while but mostly enjoyed being pulled around in the sled. We only went down the hill three or four times. Which is more than fine by me. Our sled acts as a shovel so by the time we get to the bottom, we're both covered in snow and I can barely muster up enough momentum to get up.

I should go and enjoy the wonders of cooking alone in my kitchen!

In For the Day

Demand and I had the great pleasure of staying indoors all day today. I started by sleeping in since I had no where to go. And by sleeping in I mean I didn't set my alarm but of course woke up at 7:01am. Fifteen minutes later Demand joined us in bed and fell right back to sleep. A nice change of pace for us. Eventually Demand slunk out of our bed and I was forced to follow her.

I decided that since we'd be home all day it was the perfect time to really work on potty training. I put her on the potty right away but she insisted she didn't have to go. One minute later she peed on the step stool while brushing her teeth. The day did not seem promising. Into her second pair of underwear she went before we headed to the kitchen to make Mr. Sloth some coffee. I stayed in my pajamas most of the morning, partly because I felt like it and partly because it's all I can really wear right now.

Mr. Sloth got off to a slow start as well, leaving for work around 8:40am. Shortly there after I convinced Demand to try sitting on the potty again. Remembering how she had peed while sipping water earlier, I thought I would give it a try. Sure enough 15 seconds after giving her a drink of water she peed on the potty!! She peed three times today, which I think is a record. She never wet her second pair of underwear, she was switched to a pull-up however in the late afternoon as an attempt to have her nap.

Our afternoon was special because I got to babysit a nine month old. It was only for two hours, but it was exciting enough for Demand and I. The first twenty minutes he just cried, which made me remember how draining children under the age of one are and what I was in store for soon enough. He warmed up for about forty-five minutes though, eating and watching Demand. Demand is so ready to be a big sister. She read him stories, played peek-a-boo, sat on the blanket with him, and ran "errands" for me when needed. With an hour left I actually got him to fall asleep which, if you recall, NEVER happened with Demand. Demand never slept without nursing until she was two years old. Now, this little guy would have *liked* to nurse, but I had nothing to offer and he wasn't interested.

He napped in Demands old travel crib which *Valentine* will be sleeping in soon enough. When I came downstairs and Demand found out the little guy was sleeping in her room she wanted to nap. (Yeah, right! Sure you do! )After he left she was still insisted on napping....in the travel crib. Now she grew out of that thing when she was 7 months old, so you can only imagine how ridiculous she looks in there now.

So Demand never napped which showed by the time Mr. Sloth came home. I managed to entertain her with snow for the third time today while I made dinner. As soon as she was done eating she was just *done*. I didn't get a chance to finish my fourth taco because Demand was crying for me upstairs (and she never cries for us by name). She was having problems getting her notebook to stand up like an easel, which of course is worthy of crying over. We've learned that a tell-tale sign that Demand is overtired is when she starts crying over coloring. Very bizarre.

Mr. Sloth went to the gym while I bathed Demand and put her to bed. She even seemed unusually interested in sleeping because she asked to be done with her bath and get clothes on. Midway through dressing her I realized that she wanted to sleep in the "green crib" (travel crib for babies). When she realized that wasn't an option, it was all over.

Demand is asleep now, and Mr. Sloth is still at the gym, and I have eaten my fair share of chocolate coated things for one day, but I still have a dirty kitchen. It's the last room to be cleaned today. I was able to clean upstairs during bath time which is awesome. Including putting fresh sheets on our bed and putting away all the clean laundry. I'd like to have the kitchen done before Mr. Sloth gets home but I feel I'm running out of time.

To wrap things up, here are some lessons for the day.

1) Snow indoors is natures best activity for toddlers. Any mess it makes is well worth it.

2) Drinking water can make you pee. (Didn't know that.)

3) And bathtub soap-paints are priceless since they entertain toddlers, encourage creativity, and wiping it off cleans your tub.

Fan-tastic!