Not Interesting to Anyone but Me

Just like Facebook status updates about these things, I can imagine that blog posts about potty-training leave those who are not entrenched in the process rolling their eyes so hard that you can hear them click.

*CLICK*

Those were your eyeballs rolling in their sockets because this is a post about potty-training.

Don't worry...that pic of the cute pink potty is the only picture in the post, and I won't go into gory details. But since this blog serves as a record of my kids' goings-on (in addition to words about fitness and training and other stuff), this post is appropriate and necessary.

Miss C is my youngest and final child. She was in a diaper longer than the other three were. She just didn't give a ----, and I was too lazy busy preoccupied to bust the diaper-free move. Doing neither of us any favors, I also think there was an element of "oh, my last baby...don't want her to grow up" going on...which is partly why I haven't bothered to wean her either. Slacker mom, I am. Whatever...

One week ago, I felt ready to take this beast on. Though she had been dry through the night for over a week, when confronted with the prospect of daytime dryness, Miss C was not entirely on board, but I was game for her resistance. After 5 straight days of pee everywhere (well, fortunately she had a penchant for only peeing on the tiled floors and not the carpets) and several pants-soilings, I am ecstatic to announce that we have had 3 consecutive accident-free days!

I attribute this potty-training success entirely to my superior parenting skills. There is no luck involved. The child has nothing to do with it. If you can't potty-train a developmentally-on-track child before they graduate from high school, well, you just suck as a parent. I really hope some of you more sensitive-types caught the tongue-in-cheekness of that. I am absolutely grateful to all of you awesome and amazing well-wishers who wished me good luck when I announced this undertaking last Friday. 

My idol, Catey, who has 8 kids and is expecting her ninth (her husband is trying to catch up to mine), was reflecting on how long she's been changing diapers and how many diapers she's changed and shared with me that even though those numbers are HUGE, she would rather change diapers than potty-train. And she wrote this, which totally cracked me up, in an email the other day...

There is a woman who writes and I love to read her stuff...she had a half a billion kids and I remember at one point she said she quit trying to potty train her kids.  She let them go as long as possible and then waited until they were old enough to make wild promises about never having an accident ever before finally letting them out of diapers.


I am most thankful that Miss C ended up being far less resistant as the process unfolded. I know there will be accidents. I know there may be regression. And while the growing up of my baby is bittersweet, I am feeling great about not changing another diaper until I either have grandchildren or must deal with spousal incontinence. I hope fervently to experience the joy of the former and to escape the misery of the latter.

If you have kids, did you have an easy time with potty-training?


If you have no kids, is potty-training one of the reasons you don't?

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Even MORE than you wanted to know... with even MORE answers

Here we are again... in exposé mode.

In case you are late to the game, we are playing Q & A and it all started here... so click on that if you want to see all the questions as they were asked.

Once all the questions were asked, I began answering. Some of these questions have really forced introspection, while others have made me question the asker's sanity! The first round of answers are here... so click on that if you want to know things like who my celebrity crush is, where I stand on spanking, what size jeans I wear, and to see my triathlon video again.

Then I tackled Caroline's questions... that woman is going to be the next Oprah (darn it... I was hoping to nab that vacancy)... so click on her name to find out what I want for my kids, if I breastfed them, why I run at night, what my tattoo looks like and much, much more. Adam also got some answers... mostly 'NO.'

Today, the interrogation continues... and we're not done yet. The final installment will be a video... oooo cool, you say... but it means you'll have to look at my face :P

Here we go:

Jess THE Blonde Ponytail (aka Private Chafe) had the following:

Does eating a slice of bread make you want to punch someone? :) She is, of course, referring to my gluten-free lifestyle. No punches are usually thrown, but foods containing gluten make me very, very "reactive."

Do you wipe from the front to back, reverse or not-at-all? the right way.

Who would play you in a movie?  (Laima asked this one, too!) I'd like to give the role to Jodie Foster. I think she is a wonderful actress and is the right age, but she's too short and flat-chested.

The Manly Runner could initially only muster these questions for me... so disappointing...

How in the heck do you keep up on reading and writing Blogs with 10 kids? I can't with one. (Laima has 4 kids, but she also asked this question) The older six are 19 through 31 and don't live here. So there are only 4 kids in the house. I don't get much sleep.

If you had to drive across the country and could only bring one CD what would it be? Assuming I would not be traveling with my kids and it is not a mix CD, I would have to bring just the Sound of Music soundtrack because I could sing along to every song, pretending I was in the Austrian Alps... I would have gone crazy from listening to the same thing over and over again anyway... why not have it happen listening to Julie Andrews and those cute kids?

(of course, he DID come back with more... those will be in the video)

His boyfriend, Kovas, wanted to know

Fidel or Stalin? Dude, yeah... Fidel all the way. He had a nice smile and let me hug him. A sweetheart.

North Dakota or South? Aren't those badlands in South Dakota? I want those... so South.

Who let the dogs out? I think it must've been the neighbor's kids.

What you gon' do with all that junk?/All that junk inside your trunk? Clearly you've mistaken me for someone else... I have no trunk.

Why you sleepin' with ya eyes closed? I tried it with them open – it didn't work out so well.

Should I stay or should I go now? You should go unless you can come up with more compelling questions!

Patrick from The Road had these equally inspired and inspiring questions...

Do you think the chicken crossed the road just to get to the other side or is it a small part in some sort of government cover up? I think it was all part of that Carmageddon thing. That chicken was working for the contractor.

Are we alone in the Universe or is there life on other planets? Gary Coleman, Phyllis Diller... we are NOT alone.

James Taylor or Neil Young? No thanks :)

What do you think the success rate (as a percentage) was for successfully executed wild west gun fights? "Successfully executed" is defined as a gunfight that ends with at at least one participant down for good. My best guesstimate would be somewhere between 78 and 92% ... but really, I have no idea.

Julie was curious about:

How do you deal with rotten Mom moments? I remind myself of a quote from I think it was a Cary Grant film that I am so annoyed I can't remember the name of. It goes something like this..."I take consolation in the fact that never in the history of mankind has any parent ever done the job 'right.'" Man, I wish I could remember that movie and the exact quote. I usually apologize after a cooling off period and give hugs and kisses and loving reassurances.

Both of my boys have the same sarcastic "wit" that I do, do your children "get you" and follow in your steps? For the most part, my kids 'get' me. They are all pretty sharp and sharp-witted. As they gain experience and confidence, I do believe they will one day be able to banter with the best. 

If you had to read only 2 blogs from now on whose would you read? Definitely Catey's. Her Random Thoughts From the Zoo is what finally helped me get the courage to try running again and got me interested in blogging about it. I *heart* Catey :)

H Love wanted to know:

How many times a day do you think about running? anywhere from not at all to several... all over the map!

Where do you find strength, and no I don't want to know how far you can run or how many push ups you can do. I derive a great deal of strength from knowing I have lived through my past experiences. The trials, tribulations and joys of my life all strengthen my resolve to carry on, live life as fully as I can and deepen my faith in what I'll call 'the process'.

Do you brush your teeth before breakfast, sex, or running? Almost always before breakfast but not necessarily before the other two... spontaneity and all that.

Run with Jess  had food-related questions:

What's the oldest thing buried at the back of your fridge/freezer? HA! I just found some mustard that has an August 2002 expiry date! We have moved with this mustard in tow! Holy moley! Of course I put it back in :P 

Your favorite breakfast?  Gluten-free banana-blueberry pancakes that my husband makes for me!


BDD mastered the inane...

If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? How do you think she GOT popular?

Do penquins have knees? Yes, and little bitty kneepads for when they play volleyball.

How does aspirin find the headache? First, it corrects your spelling mistakes...

If teflon is stick free, how do they get it to stick to the pan? It doesn't know a life outside of the pan, so it sticks around out of fear.

When someone yells "headsup!!" why does everyone duck? For the same reason that when someone yells "catsup!!" everyone holds out their hot dog... conditioning.

And S who blogs at footbeats wanted to know...

Plugs or Pads and why? pads are a bulky, sticky, icky mess akin to diapers. Plus... you need to wear underwear to effectively use them ;-)

Have you ever had to change the above during a race? If yes, details. No... fortunately. Only had those issues in training!

Whats the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you during a race (assuming a "no" answer to above)?  other than crashing and burning in my first marathon and full-on peeing in my pants in a marathon relay, nothing during a running race. Rowing is a different story.



The next installment will be the last and, as I said above, will feature video responses to questions from the following valued readers:

Laurie from The (Mis)Adventures of a Jogging Stroller Mom
Noemie... who is my friend in real life and I can't believe she never asked me this stuff in person!
Sandra from Absolutely Narcissism who is in serious training for fitness model competitions... she is so beautiful and fit already!
Lisa who has an unobtainable profile
Jennifer from Chase-ing the Dream
Beth from Shut Up and Run
And Chris K's shame-induced follow-up.

See you then!

And you'll see me :)

Granny's Gadgets #16

Whew!

This is the very first time I have actually forgotten to do Granny's Gadgets! Space City over here :P  Must be the jet-lag... I am getting a lot of mileage out of that one ;-)  Oddly, today I received something in the mail that was completely related to gadgety goodness, and I still didn't remember I needed to pick a gadget and make a video. Might have something to do with the gazillion posts I already did today... well, three anyway... one really long one, one cute short one, one about French produce vendors, and one about my hip problem. Another whew for the psycho-ness of all that posting!

After my run tonight, I showered (!) and put on my jammies. My husband was making dinner... as usual (he is a total keeper). When he took a break from the kitchen to go conduct his real business for a few moments, I was languidly slicing the tomato, thinking about the post I would write about the run and the manner in which I would thank Catey from Random Thoughts from the Zoo for the surprise I received in the mail, when it hit me like a rake hidden in the grass... right between the eyes and sharp underfoot.

I need to do a GADGET!!!!!

I looked down at the cutting board, and divine inspiration swept me away...

Here is this week's fine work of gadget-genius from the good people at EKCO...

Contrary to how things turned out tonight, I do think this item will be useful ... on a smaller tomato or a hard-boiled egg... if I had any from Easter, I could have tried it out that way :P

And Catey... you are just  so super sweet!  I am so excited to try out the replacement :) How on earth you have the time to do an ebaby for me... well, honestly, I am blown away by your thoughtfulness and generosity.

Any of you who have not yet checked Catey out... get on over to her blog! She is one of the prettiest, most inspiring, most fit, incredibly organized, thoughtful and perceptive, funny and fun mom of eight kids you could ever hope to read about. She is the reason I not only returned to running but a big part of why I started blogging. I *heart* Catey.

Go!

Turkey Trot 5K Run Report!

Yesterday, I participated in the Fifth Annual Family Fun Turkey Trot!

I woke up on Thanksgiving morning to beautiful and cold weather.  Where I live it was about 40ºF and where the race was to be held it was about 30ºF.  But the sun was shining and the skies were clear and the air was calm.  The 50-minute drive up was lovely...fall colors through the vineyards, the bay was mirror-like, everything felt clean and crisp.

The event was very well-run... easy and adequate parking for all, an assortment of yummies including coffee and hot chocolate, a bathroom very close by that was heated (so nice! people were joking about hiding out in there), friendly and efficient traffic control provided by the husband one of the hosts, personalized timing provided by the same husband, a very well-marked "real" 5K course... my compliments to the race organizers!

The course started off with a nice, long  downhill through a beautiful vineyard and continued with a nice, long downhill through a tree-lined residential area.  I realized pretty quickly that this nice, gentle, long downhill stretch would be turning into a not-so-nice, seemingly-less gentle, and suprisingly longer-feeling uphill at the very end of the run!  It then looped around through some semi-farm-ish/residential areas, a good mix of flat and hills up and down, past a very helpful 2-mile marker (so happy to see that) until heading back up toward the start.  I got to see frost!  And frozen puddles!  We don't often have those where I live.

With the fresh reminder that this was called a "run" and not a "race"  lol  there was no jostling, no tripping, no slapping, no name-calling... oh, that was back at home... and everyone just truly trotted along, really enjoying the beautiful morning.

I finished the course in 28:52.  So Catey was right... faster than my prediction... by a good amount.

Met some very nice people!  Anne Marie and her friends are fun and friendly.  She and her co-host attract a good bunch!

What a great way to start a day of giving thanks!

A few things you may already know...

Did you know Disneyland is expensive?

A slice of pizza costs over $6, a small bag of chips is $3, a popsicle is $4... even the t.p. in the bathroom stalls is in a coin-op dispenser!  (no, that last one is a joke... but given the Disney squeeze-'em-for-all-they-got credo, my guess is that it's not out of the realm of future possibilities... but of course the t.p. will probably be super cute with embossed Mickeys on it).  This doesn't even mention the cost of admission... we won't go there.

Did you know 8 hours is a LONG time to spend in a car with 4 kids?

Especially after only 4 hours of sleep for the grown ups.  Fortunately, I was smart enough to NOT tell the kids the night before so they actually slept well and long that night before.  The husband's need for a candy bar actually cost us about an hour.  Those 5 minutes spent getting that treat set us up perfectly in time to be part of a roadblock due to a fire on the side of the highway.  We were about 4 cars from the edge of the stoppage.  You can bet he SAVORED that Three Musketeers like no other!

Did you know a camera would be a really good thing to bring on a family trip to Disneyland?

Yeah, one of those "must-have" items.  We'll remember that next time ;-)   Sure, we did have a cell phone, but techno-idiot me cannot figure out how to get them off the phone and onto the computer to share with others.

Did you know they don't allow outside food or drink to be brought into Disneyland?

So if you have food sensitivities or other nutritional-type issues... like, I don't know, you want to eat healthfully.  Prefer to not consume sugar or hydrogenated oils.  Can't eat gluten.  Or dairy.  Or like your water free, cool and palatable.  If any of those describe YOU, well, my friend, you are S.O.L.  Or... you can smuggle.  This is very tricky because you need to pass Checkpoint Charley upon entering... and they are pretty thorough.  Sweatshirts with hoods and kangaroo pockets are excellent smuggling devices when used in conjunction with the storage basket of a stroller.  Yes, I let my kids eat the pricey pizza and fancy Mickey-head Eskimo pie things and all that.  I am actually not against junk food, per se.  It just does very BAD things to me.  Migraines.... baaaaaaad.  So I was able to eat "clean" from my stroller stash.  Shhhhhhhhh!  Please don't tell on me!

Did you know that trichiasis is quite painful and requires epilation with forceps?


And if you don't have your own forceps (i.e. tweezers), good lighting, and a steady hand then a trip to Urgent Care is in order.  Even though it sounds like an STD, trichiasis is when your eyelash grows in wrong and gouges into your eyeball.  (And epilation means "plucking").  Of course that happened on this trip!

Did you know that beginning a 7-hour road trip at 9:45 p.m. is smart?


Just think... you miss all the traffic.  And 7 hours magically becomes 5 hours and 31 minutes!  M&M's are better than coffee!  Thanks to my giveaway win from this sweet mommy blogger I was fueled for the night!  Oh, and my Driving Goddess status is best not divulged to the authorities.  Thanks!

Did you know that a Disney Blitz is like childbirth?

Why plan?  You never know how exactly it'll go anyway.  Whatever you threw in the bag probably won't be what you really need or want to use... but it'll do anyway.  Pain, yelling, more pain, more yelling, very little rest, not much relaxation no matter how hard you try, more pain, more yelling, fleeting thoughts of how amazing it all is, some tears of joy, some pain again, insistence that it is all wonderful, brief despair that you can't make it through, unmitigated laughter, face-splitting smiles, contentment, exhaustion.  And then all you can remember is how amazing it all was.

As soon as I can figure out the darn phone I'll put some pictures up along with a story of our adventures. It was a great time.  Truly insane spontaneity.  Kind of can't believe we did it.  Makin' memories ;-)

Of course the real fun began when I returned home to find out that my primary email account had been hacked.  Nice, eh?

Giveaways!

The other day I won a giveaway!  I follow another mom's blog and she held a contest in which she listed a bunch of fun, entertaining, random questions and readers answered.  The person with the most correct answers won as well as a randomly selected reader... I was the randomly selected reader!  


The same mom is having another giveaway on her blog... it's a Scentsy Giveaway!

If yummy scents are your thing, check it out!