Thursday, July 24, 2008

more peeing woes

colby will be starting school in the fall, 2 days a week. we're easing into it.
so today i got the bright idea to have him "practice" resting. let me back up...
this child stopped taking naps at 18 months (kick me in the head, please), and though i maintained rest time for about 6 months after that, once molly came along it was no longer a battle worth fighting so he's been an 8am to 8pm (roughly; lately that gap has been a little wider) kid since 2 years old.
that brings us to present. molly takes a nap. colby doesnt.
i figured when he starts school he will have some kind of down time in the afternoon, so i thought maybe i should get him used to that so its not completely foreign to him when hes presented with it in 4 weeks (yikes!!).
so today after i put molly down for her nap at 1:30, i sat colby down and told him we were going to start a new thing, but that he wouldn't like it. i went into the whole "practicing for school" and "big boys need rest" blah blah blah. i even sent him in with a juice box and fruit chews (i am not opposed to a good bribe every now and then) and a stack of just checked out library books that we hadn't even opened yet.
i made it out without any tears (from either of us), and had been sitting on the couch doing my Bible study for about 10 minutes, when i hear his door open.
"mommy, i need to tell you some stuff!!" (yelling from his doorway)
"colby, don't yell! you'll wake up your sister!" (whispered very forcefully)
so i went to see what he had to tell me, which wasn't anything other than the bright idea that i could do my Bible study in his room and we could have rest time together. i explained that if he wanted me to be a nice mommy i needed to have rest time by myself, thank you very much.
so i left his door open and returned to my Bible study--coincidentally enough, about patience. good timing, Lord.
not 3 minutes later he comes running past me saying he was going to go use my bathroom. i guess his was not sufficient at that moment. too close to his room i suppose.
"that's fine. but come right back."
he returns quickly, "mommy i peed!"
"thats great, colby, but you don't need to announce it. put your underwear and shorts back on."
"but you need to come see."
"no i don't. i've seen it before. put your underwear and shorts back on."
"but we have to dump it."
"what?" (oh, no. he didn't.)

explanation...molly has been somewhat interested in the toilet (yes, other than drinking the water out of it) so i took colby's potty training toilet down from the closet yesterday so it can be available to her should she decide she wants to use it.

"did you pee in the little toilet?"
he nods, as if thats a completely normal thing to do.
"uugh. colby." (patience, yes Lord...and beth moore...i hear you)
i go into the bathroom and there it is, a tot sized toilet full of pee.
"colby don't do this again."
that's when it happened. i felt the wetness under my foot. it's probably just leftover from the kids' baths last night, i thought to myself. then i saw a few smallish puddles on the floor around said toilet and had the bright idea to swipe my fingers through it just to make sure, although at this point i was pretty sure that bath water wouldn't still be on the floor almost 24 hours later.
i was right, or wrong, depending on which sentence you're going off of. it was pee. i smelled it. i had it on my fingers...and my foot.
"colby, did you pee on the floor?"
"well, i didn't push my penis in so it sprayed everywhere."
(c'mon mom, do you even have to ask? i mean, duh.)
i'm still not sure how he got that much on the floor and that much in the bucket.
so, i dumped the pee out, washed the bucket, and cleaned up the floor; and sent him back to his room.
i needed to finish that patience stuff.
another day, another puddle.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

charlottes web and Jesus


i don't know about you, but here at our house we watch movies in phases. colby picks one movie, it has its 15 minutes of fame, if you will, and then another movie has its chance in the spotlight. these "phases" are usually 5 to 7 days long. lately we haven't really been watching anything in particular. we came off the toy story glory days and hit a ditch of movielessness.

then came charlottes web. my mom took colby and molly on one of their many many trips to the big big store (also known as wal-mart) and this is what colby picked for his "treat". according to grammie he'd been eyeing it for awhile so she finally bought it for him. i guess consistency has its perks, this one in the form of a very old and poorly animated movie.
thats right. i just knocked one of the classics. but have you watched it recently?
i must add that at one time i too enjoyed charlottes web.
i was actually looking forward to sitting down with colby and talking him through the life and times of wilbur the pig.
my thoughts quickly changed from "this will be great!" to "seriously?"
have you ever had one of those moments where you experience something that, as a kid, was super fun or bigger than life as it were, then you experience that same thing as an adult and ask yourself what you were thinking?
thats kind of where i was as i sat on my couch with my three year old singing "chin-up, chin-up" along with debbie reynolds in the form of a singing spider.
at any rate, that has been the movie of choice for the last week or so.
moving along to the point of my story....we were on our way home from church the other day and colby says to me...
colby: "mommy, did charlotte die so wilbur could live?" (hmm, not exactly...)
me: "well, colby, charlotte worked really hard so that wilbur wouldn't be killed, and that probably just made her really tired. but everyone dies (back to that again), so she would have died eventually anyway." (oh, my goodness is that the right answer?)
colby: "but wilbur got to live cause of all the things charlotte did for him."
me: "yes, thats right. she saved him."
colby: "Jesus died so we could live."
me: "wow, you totally just connected Jesus to charlottes web." (is charlottes web a spiritual metaphor? have i seriously missed this for 20-something years??)
colby: "did Jesus die so wilbur could live?"
me: "no buddy, that was charlotte. kind of. remember we already covered that? Jesus died for people."
colby: "did charlotte die so Jesus could live?" (oh no)
me: "no. charlotte didn't really die for anyone. she just loved wilbur very much."
colby: "so who died for Jesus?" (how to end this conversation....)
me: "no one died for Jesus. Jesus died for us, and He loves all of us very much.
colby: "yeah. thats great."
me: "yes it is." (whew!)
so now we're gathering spiritual conotations from random animated movies. fantastic.
well, God is in everything. i guess that includes charlottes web.


Monday, July 7, 2008

colbys prayer

i don't post more than once a day, but i had to share this conversation i had with colby at bedtime. we always end our day by me asking colby what he's thankful for and then we incorporate that into our bedtime prayer. so this is how it went tonight....

me: "colby, what are you thankful for today?"
colby: "i'm thankful for you, and me, and daddy, and molly, and all the people in the town."
me: "ok, very good. anything else?"
colby: "i'm thankful for the food. and our mouths. and our noses. and our eyeballs. and our hair."
me: "what about daddy? he doesn't have any hair."
colby: "no he doesn't. i'm thankful for his bald head. and then he had a mohawk. now it's gone and he has hair on his face."
me: "yes, thats right."
colby: "i'm thankful for brutus and bliss." (my parents dogs)
me: "ok, thats good."
colby: "are brutus and bliss gonna die?"
me: "well, they will die someday, but not anytime soon probably."
colby: "but they're old."
me: "they are old, but they'll probably live lots more days." (that sentence doesnt make any sense, but give me a break; he's 3)
colby: "like maybe 2 more days?"
me: "well, probably more than that."
colby: "mimi's old." (mimi is allens mom)
me: "well, yes. mimi is kind of old." (i truly didn't know what to say...sorry mimi)
colby: "is mimi gonna die?"
me: "someday mimi will die, but hopefully she'll live a long long time."
colby: "i love mimi very much. lets pray that mimi lives a lot of more days."

so we did.
the end.

they have guns

well, i just spent 2 hours at a travel clinic in cedar park getting the low-down on africa.
for those of you that don't know, i (along with my dad and friend zach) will be going to ghana in september to work with the seatons. i had my hep a, hep b, and tetanus shots about a week and a half ago, and i must share with you that outside of childbirth the post shot pain of the tetanus vaccine is some of the worst i can remember experiencing. seriously. good thing i only need it every 10 years.....
anyway, so after leaving bible study (at my own house) early to drop the kids off at my moms, i head up to the church to meet dad so he and i can go get our yellow fever and typhoid shots. we couldnt get them with our other shots because for some reason our dr's office doesnt offer those.
don't ask, i don't know why.
our appt was at 11:30, so we got there about 11:20 because if i'm not a little early i feel like i'm late. if you're early you're on time, if you're on time you're late, and if you're late don't bother coming. i've heard that somewhere before. i digress.
we filled out the 3 pages of ridiculous and redundant paper work. and then we are called back (together, thankfully) by sandy. bright, cheerful, happy sandy.
if anyone could talk me out of going to ghana, it would be sandy. i thought we would walk in get shots and walk out. wrong. we sat with sandy, and heard a colorful dissertation on the perils of ghana.
"i wouldn't go if my life depended on it. they have guns. and children? you're going to be working with kids? kids spit on you. you might get polio. did you know there are 3 kinds of mosquitoes? 2 day biters and a night biter. mosquitoes like flowery smells and bright colored clothes, so you need to smell bad and dress drab."
i must admit, it was good information, but doom and gloom. at least she could have given us candy or a sticker or something before single-handedly wiping out any warm fuzzies we may have built up thus far. not much of a moral booster that sandy. they have guns in ghana.
i will give her this much-she gives good shots. i didnt feel either one of them.
so i guess thats the silver lining. that and the chik-fil-a sandwich i had on the way home.