Old Blog Posts: January 2008

…we now have five brides who have requested information/meetings with us! 

I’ve been sick all week, so wouldn’t it figure that just as I am starting to feel better, Will comes down with it. 

We had a sore throat party at midnight last night–watched a movie and drank juicy water while Will told me about his “ouch.”

(Needless to say, I plugged the tv back in when I got really sick.  When we’re well, it will be off limits again.)

If you know Will, you know that he loves to play the “one, two, three, WAKE UP MOMMA!” game.  But he does NOT like it played on him when he is trying to fall asleep at an inopportune time.  If you say “one, two, three, WAKE UP WILL!!” he opens his eyes and looks at you and then says “SLEEEE[p]!” and closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

Nic taught him to hide under a blanket and say “oh no!”

My favorite, though, is his version of ut-oh.  He says “ut-ut oh.”  Every time with the extra “ut.”  It makes it really cute and sing-songy, even if he just dropped a spoonful of oatmeal on my favorite shirt.

I have my first meeting with a bride on Saturday.  I am very excited.  My new sample album arrived just in time.  It is gorgeous, sturdy, and HUGE.  11×14 is really big in an album!  The album is shockingly heavy–it has to weigh 20 pounds. I’ll post a few pictures later–I’m avoiding posting it on the photography blog because the last time I posted a fun new product, zillions of photographers emailed me to know where I got it.  And if everyone has them, they won’t be nearly as cool!

I put an advertisement in a local wedding site because it was cheap ($30) and you don’t have to sign a contract–it is just month to month.  Sounded like a good gamble.  And it is paying off!  The ad was up for only two days before I had an email from a bride saying that she already had a photographer, but now she regretted it.  She gushed over our style and cheap prices (we underpriced ourselves by about $1000), then posted about me on The Knot (which is HUGE in the world of brides and weddings–it is the 2peas of weddings) and because of her post, a bride found my website and contacted me about setting up a meeting!  Wish me luck for Saturday!

Today is a banner day for Will.  I am declaring him Potty Trained!!!

(Watch the Gods be totally pissed off by this, and tomorrow we’ll have to stick him in diapers.)

Thursday as Will and I were coming home from My Gym we pulled into the garage and discovered Nic’s car–he was already home!  I said “Oh good!  Daddy is home!” and from the back seat I heard “Da, home?!”

A cute Will story to share:  I gave him a snack of goldfish crackers in his Finding Nemo cup this afternoon.  He dropped all of the fish on the floor, filled the cup with water, and then put them back.  I did not teach him that!  I couldn’t believe it!

He was very content,dipping them into the water and pulling them back out, until they started to dissolve.  Then he got upset and when his fingers got gunky he would run to me and say “hands!” and I wiped his hands and then he ran back and we repeated the process.  Will doesn’t like messy hands for too long.  He likes to use a napkin at dinner–it is very cute!

 I figured out why the Brio trains say three and up.  Because the engines don’t have magnets on the front of them.  And so you can’t connect them to other engines.  Which will make a 23 month old LOSE HIS MIND

In other news, we unplugged the tv.  No tv for Will.  None at all.

Will watches (or I should say WATCHED) too much tv.  Nic knew it, I knew it…the cable company knew it.  But because he can turn on the tv, turn on the dvd player, go get a dvd case from the closet (where we had hidden them in an attempt to cut down on the watching), open it up, get the dvd, put it into the dvd player, and change the input on the tv…it wasn’t a matter of Will coming to us and asking us to watch TV and us saying “no” it was a matter of us physically restraining him.  Besides…it’s easy to fall back on the tv when things are busy.  And things always seem to be busy!

Every night for the last week I’ve gone to bed thinking “we need to watch less tv–tomorrow I’m going to sneak downstairs before Will and unplug it” only to wake up and think “tomorrow–we’ll quit tomorrow.”

Yesterday I was at a friend’s house bemoaning my crappy parenting and saying that I really need to just suck it up and unplug the tv.  Last night, after dinner, as Will declared his intent to watch Mo-Mo, Nic looked at me and asked “Do you think he watches too much tv?”  I said “yes.”  He said “do you think we should unplug it?”

It was very weird, because we hadn’t talked about it lately at all…and suddenly on the same day I talked to a friend about it, Nic suggested it, too.  So I got Will’s attention and Nic Pulled the Plug.

It’s gone well.  We finished Day One and it was easier than I thought.

“done” is probably the absolute cutest, but “gone” is adorable, too.  he’s also added “phone” to the list

Lots of stuff going on around here this past three day weekend!  Potty training, trying to get Will to go to bed like a champ, getting two of our pictures picked up for a travel photography article, the most beautiful snowy day ever, finally getting my website fixed from Blu (in the end, I did so much of the work myself, that all they needed to do [other than slap my hand for violating the terms of use and trying to fix it myself] was reset the password)…and yesterday Nic got requested for an interview on Wednesday!

He is now one-for-one when it comes to applying for jobs and getting an interview!  Yippee for Nic!  His interview will be Wednesday afternoon, so please pray hard for us!  I have total faith in Nic, but landing a job this early in the game would certainly be a nice relief!!

He sent in his resume/cover letter for one job in particular, but he will be interviewing for several that he qualifies for, which is nice, I think!  The company is Booz Allen, which is a consulting firm.  This means that it is very hard for me to understand what they do…but on the flip side, it does mean that he wouldn’t have to “sell anything bought or processed, buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold or bought, or repair anything sold, bought or processed.”  Which, as we all know, is the dream.

It would be a good job for him, and he’d probably work at Schriever or their offices in town–neither of which would increase his commute.  With the current economy, and Nic’s particular experience/skills, we’ll be best off staying here for another year or two, so cross your fingers for us–we definitely want this interview to go well!

Yesterday afternoon when Nic saw the email, he was suitless.  Not a suit to his name that wasn’t navy blue with ribbons on it.  (Barney from How I Met Your Mother would be so pissed off at him.)  So…we crossed our fingers that we’d find either (a) a perfect suit or (b) a remarkably fast tailor, and dashed off to Banana Republic.  Nic wanted to ditch me and Willie B, but I insisted on coming along.  This was my first opportunity to purchase a shirt/tie combo with Nic, and I wasn’t about to miss it.

We got very lucky.  Banana Republic (where I’d encouraged people to buy Nic gift certificates for his birthday, since I knew he would be needing a suit soon and it seems to match his style) sells their suits meant to be worn off the hangar.  Lucky!  They had the sizes he needed (which was even more lucky), and we’ll take the jacket in for a minor alteration once we know it’s safe to do so, but it looks great now.  And best of all, Nic got a COLORED shirt.  (When we’d discussed this beforehand, he was leaning toward white.  WHITE!  Why not just paint “blah” on your chest and have done with it?!)  And two awesome ties (cause we couldn’t decide, and both were awesome).  It looks really sharp, and I can’t wait to see him all fancy tomorrow for his interview!

Will came along for the shopping experience, which was a bit of a risk…but he ate one apple and one tube of Cotton Candy Flavored LipSmackers chapstick, and that kept him content until right up at the end while we were checking out.  Then we just had to keep him trucking while we grabbed a shirt from a different store.

After the shopping, we took him to Panera for his favorite thing–broccoli cheddar soup.  When I told him we were going to get soup, he perked right up and started making slurping sounds.  He was such a doll at Panera–he did his best job ever with the soup spoon (holding it over the bowl until it dripped, dumping some off the spoon if he thought there was too much and he might spill it, leaning toward the bowl, etc) and kept eating long after Nic and I had finished.

It was a great night, and it has the possibility to get even better–the sales guy at Banana Republic was saying that the tie that was my favorite (and one of the ones we got) was the tie he had picked to wear at his wedding in June.  He didn’t have a photographer yet, so we gave him my card.  It could be fate!

I also have good stories to share from our Sunday trip to the zoo.  It was pretty much bitterly cold (below freezing for sure), and we were one of four or five families visiting the zoo.  (Nic thought it was funny that all the people there were pushing strollers.  In freezing cold weather, the parents of toddlers are STILL desperate to get out of the house!)  We toured the whole thing, which we haven’t done in a long time, and Will walked (ran) for most of it.

They had the giraffes inside, and what would have been the highlight of the trip actually was scary for Will.  Usually when you feed them, you are up on a high platform, so they don’t seem so tall.  Indoors, though, they were much taller, and it took Will a long time to work up the courage to give them a cracker.  But he did, so I was proud of him!

The real highlight of the trip was the linx.  As I walked up to her cage I saw her watching Will.  She hunkered down (just like Will the cat does before he pounces) and stalked Will!  He ran up to the cage and she pounced!  She swatted at the glass, and he patted back.  They played together for a while, and it was the funniest thing!  Nic and I are positive that it was play for her as opposed to aggression–it was just so funny.  And of course, THIS was the zoo trip that I made a decision not to bring the still or video camera!  When we left, Will blew her kisses, and then held out his arms for a hug!  It was very cute–because linx-toddler interaction is ALWAYS cute when there’s a layer of nice thick glass between them! 

You can add “child-proof door handles” to the list of “child-proof” items that Will can outsmart.  For those keeping track, they include medicine bottle caps and cabinet locks.

This afternoon, he learned how to operate our child-proof door handles.  He is not yet two.

So tonight we struggled even more with bedtime, which we had seemed to have a handle on in the last few nights.

The kid takes after so many people in our family.  But at bedtime, he reminds me so much of his Aunt Kelly.  In fact, Kelly will probably be disappointed to hear that at only two, he as already de-throned her of her title as The Stall Master.

Kelly’s skills were legendary, but even she would be impressed by what Willie B has to throw at us.  He starts off with the usual–the requests for water, for one more story…and like Kelly, he learned quickly to Just Be Cute.  Cuteness will always get you an extra minute.  Requests for another hug are like a golden ticket.  Moms just can’t resist that.  An adorable kiss blow to you on your way out the door.

He, as you all know, is not above using poop as a stall tactic.  And tonight, he used pee.  “Ka!” he shouts, and we take him to the potty.  He squeezes out some pee, goes back to bed, and repeats the process.

Tonight he tried something new.  “Ka!” he shouted from his doorway, holding Paul (the potty training doll), who was naked from the waist down with his legs spread.  I thought I knew where he was going with this, but since potty training is our number one priority right now, I figured I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

My instincts, though, were dead on.  He ran to the potty, held Paul over it, and made grunting noises.  Then he flushed for Paul.

And then I marched him back to bed.

Tonight, as soon as he discovered that he could come out of his room, he added a new trick:  opening the door and then crawling along the floor with his hands covering his eyes so that surely we couldn’t see him.  (video posted.)

Nic and I could hardly keep straight faces.  In fact, Nic couldn’t–I had to be the one to send him packing.

After a few rounds of this, and some stern words, he got the idea that this was not okay behavior (which was really hard to tell him, because it was so cute and funny).

I left the door open as I left his room, hoping that if *I* left the door open, opening it would no longer be a game.

Nic and I retreated to the office, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paul go flying into the hall.  And then I heard the chorus of “wah wah wah wah wah” begin (video posted–go check them out).

Because everyone knows that no mommy can resist a crying baby, Will had sent Baby Paul out into the hallway as his ambassador.

It is incredibly hard to discipline a child that is that creative and cute.  It involves sharing a quick giggle with Nic, and then putting on a mean game face.

It’s a good thing we have all that military training.

Willie is fancy.  And he likes to wipe himself.  Today he combined those two traits in what will become a legen…wait for it…dary mess in this house.

Today, Willie pooped in his underwear.  (This is not news-worthy.)  But while I was cleaning up his poopy underwear, I left him sitting on the potty alone.  He likes to wipe himself, and normally this is not a problem (I always do a proper job of it before letting him attack the region).  He also likes to flush the toilet.  Normally, this is also not a problem.  But when combined in the ratio in which he chose to combine them…it became a huge problem.

There I was, dealing with poopy underwear, listening to Will flush the toilet and sing his happy little “I’m sitting on the potty” songs…when I heard a splash and a gush.  My eyes went wide.  I tossed the poopy underwear into the washing machine and ran into the bathroom.

Willie was sitting on his baby-potty-seat-on-top-of-big-potty-seat attachment, happily flushing away as his butt was cleansed by the gallons of water gushing underneath him.

I may have screamed a little.

I threw a rag at the lake that was our powder room, picked Will up under one arm (wet butt raised to the sky), grabbed some dirty towels to throw at the floor, and ran Will up to the bath.

We knew Will was fancy.  But I never knew he was fancy enough to require a bidet.

I thought I should write specifics about Will’s potty training progress today, since when I’m going through this again in three years, I may well have forgotten the frustration and what counts as progress.

What progress isn’t, is making it through the day in one pair of underwear.  What progress IS, is just peeing a drop or two before running to the potty.  Heck, even I pee my pants a little bit sometimes. 

He had one giant accident first thing this morning, looked shocked and very sad, and has contained it to minor accidents ever since.  He’s even up for going to the potty with Tori here (which is exactly the sort of distraction that could keep him from going to the potty).  If he has to go, and I lead him to the potty, he goes, sits, and pees.  If he doesn’t have to go, he screams bloody murder as I stear him toward the bathroom…and I let him go back to playing.

This “pee just a tiny bit and shout “KA!” and then run to the bathroom with mommy” business is okay by me.  I am very proud of my little potty trainer!  We’ve come a long way since his screaming-tantruming-“get-me-off-this-porcelain-death-trap” ways of this weekend.

Potty training has been kicking my butt the last five days.  Not fun stuff.  But today, I’m finally seeing some awesome progress.  Maybe we’ll actually be able to leave the house next week!

I just keep repeating my mantra: if you can train a puppy, you can train a Will.

Last night Will asked for another hug as we were leaving his room.  It was very sweet.  And, it also happens to be a useful word!

Last night he was quite the pill at dinner time–really just freaking out on us.  SCREAMED when we put him in his high chair, and then he threw spaghetti at me when I put his tray down.  So I took away the tray and let him scream at us for a minute or two (I refused to clean the spaghetti off his hand and leg until he calmed down, which really pissed him off).  Got him cleaned up, and then he cried again. I unbuckled him so he could get down while Nic and I had dinner, but he climbed right back up and tried to buckle himself up–crying the whole time.  He reached for his tray, so I gave him his tray.  He cried, so I took it away.  He cried when I took it away. And so on and so forth–the child was just losing it.

We didn’t know whether or not to take this screaming basket-case to My Gym as planned, so Nic simply asked “Will, do you want to go to My Gym?” and suddenly, for the first time in ten minutes, there was silence.  “Gym?  Jump?”  he asked, and wiggled out of the chair.  “Zoom?”

We told him that yes, we would “go bye-bye in the zoom to My Gym.”  He got very excited and did his monkey noise/signs (because the My Gym logo is a monkey, and he always tells me about it when we pull into the parking lot).

We got him dressed, packed him into the car, and off we drove to My Gym.  Except he fell asleep after all of five minutes in the car.  We decided to take him anyway, because a 5:45 bedtime is a recipe for trouble.

We woke Will up once we got there, and he was very excited to see that we were at his favorite place.  He played hard the whole time…but of course failed to fall asleep on the way home.  Oh well.  We let him play around for a little bit when we got home and then we had a nice easy bedtime routine.

Potty training is going okay.  It is exhausting and frustrating, because all of the progress we made in December was totally wasted.  In fact, it seems as if we’re WORSE off than we were when we started in December, because now he knows that he doesn’t want to be potty trained and would much rather continue his lifestyle of peeing and crapping when and where he wants.  Hopefully today will be a good potty training day–I could use some success around here.

The last two nights I’ve had dreams about going back to England that have made me mopey, and then I realized why–yesterday and the day before that were the 11 year anniversary of the day(s) we moved to England (we left on the 13th, arrived the 14th).  Funny that my dreams knew that, even if I didn’t!

It’s not a new word, but I have a feeling I haven’t mentioned it….or the game that accompanies it.  The “jew..jew…dree–UP DA (or MA or Nair or Jeff)” game that Will made up from The Wiggles.  And then he insists that you go back to “sleeeeeeeeep” and that your hand is positioned in exactly the right spot on your face.

A new word this past week, though, is blanket: “balin.”  And “din” definitely means “thank you.”

We’re back to potty training today.  We’re commitmented to potty training this kid this weekend.  Last night he took a poo, took of his diaper, and then sat down–grinding it into the carpet.  However big of a pain in the butt that potty training him is, it’s a lot less bad than the alternative…which seems to be a never-ending trail of poopy nights.

I’m trying not to be upset that Will’s current favorite book is actually MY book.   Heather and Erik got me On This Earth for Christmas, and that little stinker Willie B will not take his grubby hands off it!

Of course, it makes sense–he knows all the words in the book.  Elephant, giraffe, monkey, water, tree, hippo and lion.  The only pictures n the book are all of things that Will knows, loves, and can talk about!

How if only we could get them to come out with a board book version…

Will discovered my back pockets this afternoon.  He has spent a good thirty minutes collecting things to put in there.  My butt is twice its normal size.

Will added a useful word to his vocabulary last week: “help.”  (Uncle Erik often expresses concern that Will’s vocabulary covers things like “giraffe” but not “dinner.”)  “Teeth” is also heard a lot as well as another new one that I’ve forgotten.  Hopefully it will come to me soon.

I am slowly losing my mind about my website situation.  I’m ready to scream about that fact that I can’t get help with either my broken site (wrote to them over a week ago) or get access to the site I ordered almost two weeks ago.  Luckily they are located in Colorado, so if all else fails I might just bring Will over to their offices and sit there for as many hours as it takes to get some customer service.

Over Christmas I heard a lot of complaints about the lack of new videos.  So today I uploaded the ones I have–we’ve not used the video camera as much these days (probably had something to do with the arrival of our new 5d camera body), but I posted what we’ve got!

Will has spent the last ten minutes in the laundry room crying about Nan Nan, E, Nair, and Da.  Usually telling him that they went “bye-bye in the zoom” is enough…but it hasn’t been today.  He was playing nicely (stacking cans of tuna and then knocking them down again) and then he asked about Nic.  I told him that Nic was a work, and he started sobbing, ran into the laundry room, slammed the door in my face, and just started saying “Nan-Nan? E? Nair?” over and over and over again.  He’s sitting on my lap now and helping me type what I told him was a message to Nan-Nan, E, and Nair.  We’ll have to call them tonight so Will can say hello.

It breaks my heart that I can’t tell him they will be back this evening!  Of course…maybe it is a good thing that we live so far away, otherwise Will would have me visiting everyone every single day!  I guess he could hang out with the 2nd and 3rd graders that Joan teaches, and MAYBE he could dress up like a sheep and go to work with Erik disguised as medical research, but I’m thinking no one would be fooled at Heather’s med school if we tried to pass him off as a second year medical student!  I mean, the kid can’t even say “liver,” let alone tell you what medication will fix one!

Ahhhh…night four.  You’d think after three great nights in a row, we could rest easy.  Well, you’d be wrong.

Will’s late afternoon nap was probably to blame.  I woke him up from his usual mid-day nap to take him to My Gym.  I figured I could get him dressed and slip him into the car and he’d finish his nap there.  It almost worked–I got him dressed, carried him downstairs–and he was still asleep.  But I’d forgotten that the car seat wasn’t in the car, so in setting Will down to install the car seat, he woke up and got VERY ANGRY.  He didn’t go back to sleep in the car (preferring to chew me out for waking him up) and didn’t enjoy his time at My Gym as much as usual.  When we got home he fell asleep (as did I) and we didn’t wake up until Nic came home.

We did what we could–a longer than usual bath time, a nice long story time…and Will was yawning and looking tired and they were all good signs.  We tucked him in and turned out the light and left…but we did not get the wave.

So we weren’t surprised when we heard him get out of bed, turn on the light, and start playing.  We went into the other room and listened for a while, and then I went downstairs to do dishes.  When Will started shouting to be let out and kicking at the door, Nic went in to check on him.  And then shouted “Ut-oh, Traci.”

“Poop?”  I shouted back.

“Yeah.”  Nic sounded crushed.

“Did he get it everywhere?”

“Yep.”

“Is it bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it ground into the carpet?”

“Yep–and his lambskin.”

Nic took Will into the bathtub (and had a long talk with him about whose job it is to change diapers) and I finished the dishes and grabbed the cleaning supplies.  I took my time (and some deep breaths) getting up there, as I knew what I would find.  He had taken off his diaper, dropped a couple of poop logs onto the carpet and his lambskin, then stepped in it and ground it around the carpet before kicking the door with his poopy foot.

As Heather said while we chatted last night–we might as well have a dog if we’re going to be cleaning shit off the carpet.

The carpet, door, and Will all got cleaned up, we tucked Will in again with a few more kisses and one more story, turned off the light, and got the wave.  We didn’t hear another peep out of him…not even when the dog catchers came and took him away. 

We got ready for bed, got started on stories…and then Will got out of bed.  So we left.  He played for a few minutes and then knocked on his door.  We went back in and read stories, gave kisses, got the wave…and there you have three out of three great nights in the new big boy bed!  As Nic and I were telling Heather and Erik last night–we don’t care if he goes to sleep at 7:30, he just can’t hang out with us.  I just never expected that we’d be able to have that policy when he was two!

“You don’t have to go to bed, but you can’t stay here.” 

My sprained ankle kept me from working on Will with potty training last month…but I’m thinking that once we knock our errands out of the way tomorrow we’ll be working on Big Boy Goal #2: Operation Underpants.