Potty Training- Not my strong point

You would think since Princess girl is my third child to be potty trained that I would be an old hand at it.  That couldn't be farther from the truth.

First born was potty trained in day care, J-boy started training  in preschool and my mother-in-law completed the task.  Now, it is Princess girl's turn, since she won't be in daycare/preschool and a trip to England to have my mother-in-law help is a wee bit excessive, it is all up to me.

6 months ago I started working with Princess girl.  Everything had to stop when we moved and stop again when baby boy was born. So this week I am dedicating everything to work on getting Pricness girl to sit on the throne to do her business.  

Princess girl needs a lot of incentives to even sit down on the potty.  To get her onto the potty I have selection of books as a lure.  When that doesn't work I have her take her dolly to the potty and they take turns.   Then when she does the deed she gets a cookie.   She has been going au natural for the last two days so tomorrow the Dora panties come out,  hopefully they will stay dry all day.  At the very least #2's will stay out of my carpet!! 

So far the potty is winning:

Scoreboard:

Day 1:   On the floor   1

            On the potty 2

Day 2:  On the floor   1

            On the potty 2

Day at the Lake Part II

My father (GP) took all these pictures.  He is a great photographer.  Don't take my word for it, check out his webstie www.oakgrovephoto.com

First born is trying to get GP all wet!

Princess Girl takes a cookie break.

 

J-boy offers to get more water.

It was a windy they but they had a lot of fun! 

Now I know how to upload pictures from my computer, sort of 😉

Day at a Lake

I'm trying to figure out how Flkr works for getting pictures in my blog, so I thought I'd play around using the pictures from the trip to the Lake on Sunday.

Princess Girl's first sand castle, originally uploaded by draezand.

 

Thank You Sunburn

Last night I couldn't sleep because of my sunburn so I got out of bed, showered and took my book to the front room.  When I started reading J-boy came out of my bedroom (he most have snuck in there while I showered).  I let him watch cartoons because I knew he wouldn't go to back to bed right away.  During one of the commercials he came up to me and told me all about Kameron's birthday party (which was over a week ago)…

J: Kameron had birthday party

Me: Yes, he did.

J: He had cake, me didn't eat it cause I full.

Me: Really?:

J:  He like my present!

Me: That's great.

I have him a hug and he went back to watching Fairy Idol.  This is probably the longest conversation initiated by him that we have ever had. 

J-boy is speech delayed.  When he was almost 3 The husband and I decided that we were not going to wait until 3 to get him evaluated.  He could barely say two words together and we couldn't understand half of what he said.  Most of his words had no endings.  He was talking at about the level of an 18th month old

We took him to Mary Bridge Medical Center in Tacoma to have him evaluated.  He had a severe to moderate delay of speech.  Also, he had a huge gap between what he knew and what he could say.  We started weekly speech therapy sessions.  We then contacted Birth to 3 for Pierce county.  Again, he was evaluated and qualified.  I couldn't take him to group sessions because of having to drive First born to and from kindergarten, I didn't have a block of time so they sent out a therapist work with him.  I leared a lot about how to facilitate speech in everyday play. 

Soon after we got into contact with the school district to evaluate him for developmental preschool.  He did qualify for it.  So four days a week he went to preschool and started showing great progress.  When we moved to Texas he requalified and placed in an Early Childhood School where he goes 5 days a week.  In the last 6 months he has grown so much in his speech it is amazing.   He is four now and still has a ways to go but in the last 6 months he has improved exponentially.  Thank you sunburn for keeping me awake so I could have a wonderful conversation with my son.

*If you feel your child isn't developing as he/she should, talk to your pediatrician or contact your state's Birth to 3 program or school district if your child is 3 or older. Washigton State Birth to 3 and Preschool programs through school districts do not have a cost attached if your child qualifies.   All states should have programs and they are partialy federally funded so I imagine most states are free or charge a nominal fee on a sliding scale based on family size and income.

This is Scarey

As you know I use nicknames for my children, they are cute but confuse the heck out of me.  I constantly have to delete their real names and put in their nicknames.  So I was going to drop the nicknames and use their real names, until the morning DJ's on my favorite radio station changed my mind.

The DJ's set up a MySpace.com posing as a 14 year old girl.  They had perverts contacting them, which wasn't a surprise.  The surprise was when they reversed it and contacted a girl who had a MySpace account in Plano.  In two short conversations  they were able to find out her real name, what street she lived on, when her parents came home, where she played soccer and her phone number. 

They used the information and went to the area to see if they could find her house.  They were driving on the street and found the house.  Her parents put a placard in their front yard supporting her as a soccer player.  The placard had her name on it.  They went up to the door and confronted the girl and her mother, recording the conversation.  The fear in the mother's voice was chilling.  You could tell the girl was in shock and embarrassed.

I sat in the car and thought, what information do I give on my blog  could narrow down where I live.  My name is in my e-mail, I've said I live in Plano, what if I give out the name of my kid's school.  My mind was whirling.   I thought using nicknames for kids was hard, no way, after listening to the podcasts using their nicknames will never be easier.  Those signs on the lawn and the bumperstickers on the car that I thought were cute, not anymore.  

The First born is on the internet playing games and not chatting yet, but when he does my first rule is that we need to know the kid in person before he can chat with them on instant messangers.  I know the kids will resent the restrictions since I met The husband online and chatted like crazy to strangers but I was lucky and I'm not going to let my kids get exposed if I can help it.

Please listen to the podcasts and post comments, concerns and ideas.  Lets keep the dialogue going about internet safety.  The internet is our community and we want our kids to enjoy it so we need to be armed and dangerous when it comes to protecting our kids.

I'm going to go check out my 16 year old cousins MySpace account, I'm scared to see what she has on it…