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Since my recent post about beginning Potty Training 101 on my son, a lot has happened.  The experience  was much easier than I expected.  My two year old son (born in July, potty trained in August) is now out of diapers!  (But for napping and nighttime).  I’m going to tell you how I did it, with that hope that you might find valuable information from my experience.

But first, let me make an important point:  All the talk about boys not being ready for potty training until almost three years old is just that – all talk.  Ignore it.  Every child is different.  Some will get it at two, others at three.  It would have been a real shame if I had waited another six months to potty train Blake.  He was getting frequent bad diaper rashes and it would have continued, but for the underwear.

When I would tell people that I was going to potty train soon, they’d often raise an eyebrow and ask, “but is he ready?”  What does that mean?  Does he ask for the potty? No.  Does he have dry diapers for hours at a time?  No.  Does he tell me when he makes a doody? Sometimes.  I ignored the whole “ready” factor and just went for it.  If he refused to sit on the potty, even with my varsity cheerleading experience and M&M rewards, then I would know that he wasn’t ready.  But until I tried, I couldn’t know

Here’s how we did it:

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I’m 13 weeks now and relieved to put the first trimester behind me. Thankfully, my morning sickness dissolved just in time for me to attend the Smart Marriages conference, which I wrote about last week.

So what’s the next big thing in the pregnancy journey? The  “Nuchal Translucency“, also referred to as the “First Trimester Screen” or “Early Risk Assessment”.  It’s a non-invasive ultrasound and blood test designed to “help your healthcare practitioner assess your baby’s risk of having Down syndrome (DS) and some other chromosomal abnormalities as well as major congenital heart problems,” says Babycenter.com.  I’m excited for it because of the hi-resolution ultrasound (and the chance that I could find out the baby’s sex).  Then again, it could give way to more worries.

Disclosure Note: NTD Labs is a provider of first trimester screening.
Both NTD Labs and ViaCord (our blog sponsor) are part of the PerkinElmer family. Although I have to admit, I didn’t know this before I started writing this post.

My friend’s nuchal results indicated that her child’s DS risk was (more…)

I was going to write a post about how little time I spend reading the week-by-week pregnancy updates, as compared to the immense amount of time I devoted to that during my first pregnancy.  I was going to write about how this second child is already getting less attention than my first, but, I can’t even write about that right now, because I am totally sidetracked by lack of AC!  It was in the 90s today.  It’s 85 degrees right now, and a high of 98 tomorrow.

We have AC working on the first floor, but it broke down today on the second floor where the bedrooms are. If it was only my husband and me at home, we’d live, but with Blake, my sweet little 2-year old?  Poor thing!  His crib is upstairs and we’ve debated all options.  It’s too late to go to my parents’ house, his crib is too heavy to carry downstairs, so we put on our little fan and my husband is out running to Walmart to buy an industrial strength fan.  We have an emergency AC guy coming sometime before midnight, but who knows if he can fix it?  And in terms of stressful marital moments, lack of AC certainly creates one.

I guess I am back to my original topic.  There is so much going on in life and so much of my energy is taken up by Blake that I just don’t have the time to devote to the wonder and excitement of my pregnancy.  (Just checked the baby monitor, thank goodness Blake fell asleep!).

A while ago I wrote a post about the affect of birth order on personality. The first-born is (more…)

We moved to a new house a few weeks ago and the other day a good friend asked me how I like it here.  “I don’t know.  The house makes me nauseous,” I answered.

“Oh, and my car also makes me nauseous, so do the streets and my backyard.”  There really was no other way to answer the question.  I think I love it here, but I need to wait another few weeks before I can know for sure.

First trimester is icky.  Thankfully, I haven’t thrown up (yet), but the head spinning in pretty frequent.  If I think too deeply about something like my house or where to go out to dinner on Friday, I might gag.  My morning sickness wasn’t this bad during my first pregnancy (and I’m hoping that a different experience of pregnancy might mean that I’m having a girl.  I know, it’s delusional, but let me hope.)  One more complaint to add before I change the topic – I’m also extremely tired.  “How tired?” asked my father.  “Well, on some days, it’s as if I woke up in the morning and took NyQuil and then tried to go about my day.”

My new neighbor told me that during her first (more…)

Now that I’m out (aka made the pregnancy announcement), I’ve been asked that strange question, “Do you like being pregnant?” which is usually followed by a pressure-cooker comment like, “because I LOVED being pregnant!”  Hmm, what am I supposed to answer?  I’m fine being pregnant and I’m also fine when I’m not pregnant.  I don’t have strong feelings about it.  Heidi Klum says she loves being pregnant, so does Jessica Alba, but are they for real or just saying that because it sounds good?  A woman named Kat writes a whole blog taking the opposite view – I Hate Being Pregnant.

I wonder if people love and hate pregnant for the same reasons.  For instance, (more…)