Potty Training

So, no one ever told me how DRAINING potty training is! I only tried a pull up with Garrett this morning, and already I'm exhausted! He's gone potty on his own twice in the last couple weeks, so I figured we could try a pull up and see what happens. Well, not only did he pee in his pull up and not tell me, but the pull up leaked and got his shorts AND the couch wet! The weird part was that when I noticed his shorts were wet, I checked his pull up and it was dry! Then I noticed the couch was wet, and the pull up was still dry! Not until later was his pull up wet.

So then I took him to the potty and tried to explain again that he needs to tell me when his diaper feels cold. Of course he doesn't get it. So I think that this is going to be a very interesting experience.

I made a chart for Garrett that has five different potty training "lessons" and when he does any two of them, he gets a sticker on the chart. He will also get a piece of candy if he successfully goes on the potty. So I'm hoping that all this praise and bribery will help. The only problem now is getting him to understand WHEN he needs to go to the bathroom BEFORE he goes... until then I think I'm going to be doing a lot of cleaning up.

Carolyn's 3rd Birthday Party

Friday we were invited to Carolyn Irving's birthday party. It was a great time. Garrett was so good about eating dinner. He ate half of a hot dog, and even tried watermelon! We even had this fantastic birthday cake that EB made with fresh strawberries on top! But the best part (for Garrett) was after Carolyn opened her presents... the pool! All the kids got their swim suits on and played outside in the pool or ran through the sprinkler.

Carolyn was the first to go down the slide

Garrett wasn't too far after! His first time sliding into a pool!


He was SO pumped!

Yet another great slide by Garrett

I think of all the kids, Garrett had the most fun. He was running around screaming, yelling, making weird noises, and being very boisterous. He looks like he's on speed combined with a sugar rush! But it may just be because he's a boy. All the other kids his age were girls, and they play more gently. It was still funny to watch! If you can't tell which one Garrett is, he's the one making the most noise...

More summer fun...

Doug plays softball every Monday night, and Doug wanted me to come watch the game with the kids. Garrett was so excited to "play" with Daddy!

Garrett high-fiving one of Daddy's teamates

Garrett throwing like his Mommy

Ellison and I were waking Garrett from his nap and he was too tired to get up, so he snuggled with her instead.


Holland State Park- One of Garrett's favorite activities all day was to throw sand in the water.

Not much to do for Ellison. Too bright to really open her eyes, too sunny to leave the shade.

She finally got a little of the scenery after I fed her.

There was a group of kids from Oklahoma on a church trip making sand castles next to us. Garrett wanted to play with them so bad that he walked right up to them and started talking to them. They thought he was cute, so they let him help by bringing pails of water to fill up their moat.

What a tiring day! Both kids are sleeping!

Random Summer Fun-June '09

Saturday June 20th, we went to Grandpa DeGraaf's cottage on Gun Lake to celebrate Father's Day and Grandpa Rick's Birthday all in one. It was such a nice day out. But even though the wind was coming across the lake pretty strong and the water wasn't that warm, you could not keep Garrett out of the water.

Here, he's trying to smack the seaweed out of the water.

Grandpa Rick was helping Garrett learn how to surf.

Grandpa would push and steer him across the water while Garrett

laughed and tried to keep his feet on the board.

Just kickin' it with Daddy

Doug and his sister Gwen got their hand prints and names in the cement when the sidewalk was laid when they were little. Garrett has his hands in Daddy's prints.

Ellison smiling that beautiful smile of hers

We went to my parents house for Father's Day. Unfortunately the day was not a good one for me. Garrett threw up in the car on the way there, probably car sick. So we did lots of laundry and car cleaning once we were there. Then after lunch, my dad was playing with Garrett in the kitchen and was making him laugh really hard... a little too hard. He started coughing and then threw up... again. Luckily the floor is linoleum and very easy to clean. Later, Garrett was outside with Doug, and the driveway reached out and tripped Garrett, making him scrape up both knees pretty badly. Doug carried him in crying and we had to administer some first aid to the bloody knee. After we got home, Garrett asked me if he could have some orange juice. So he helped me make some orange juice. He drank it pretty fast, and not ten minutes later, he got some juice down the wrong hole and started coughing... Can you guess what happened next? Yup. He threw up on the couch. I'm so glad that day is over, but we did get some cute pictures.

My dad trying to coax a smile out of Ellison

My mom got some new toys for Garrett from a family friend. He's trying to use his new chainsaw to cut up my mom's cupboards.

The face Ellison makes when she doesn't want to smile... which is often.

Doctor day...

Today Ellison went to the doctor to get her 2 month vaccines. She had 4 altogether, and 3 of them were shots. She did fairly well. She did let out a high pitched shriek, but calmed down fairly quickly after I picked her up. Her stats are great! She's 11 pounds 0.5 ounces and 24 inches long. Her head circumference is 15 inches. Her weight and head circumference is in the 50th percentile, and her length is somewhere around the 97th percentile! She's already growing at a faster rate than Garrett did. For length, Garrett never passed the 75th percentile!

So my little girl is growing very fast and I feel like I don't have enough time to put all her cute little clothes on her! She's very smiley during diaper changes, (go figure- she likes being nude as much as her brother!) but she's a little more reserved overall about giving away her smiles. I remember Garrett smiling easily with us. Not Ellison. She's got to figure you out first. She also smiles more for Mommy than Daddy.

She's also a tummy sleeper. Dr. Decker told me today that a recent study showed that the rate of SIDS is THE SAME for babies sleeping on their tummy if they fall asleep with a pacifier versus sleeping on their back! That makes me feel better. I tried getting her to sleep on her back, but the longest she's gone is 45 minutes. But having her in the bassinet next to me also relieves any worry. I hear every little shuffle she makes, and she's already REALLY strong holding up her head. At our house, she gets back time instead of tummy time because she's always on her tummy!

She's not really doing anything spectacular at this point. She's only 2 months old and still only eats, sleeps, poops, and cries. Her hair, however, is looking more and more red everyday! It's still only a strawberry blond, but I have a feeling she's going to have my hair color or darker red when she's teenager and adult. But as a kid most likely she's going to be blond.

She still prefers Mommy over Daddy, although Daddy has recently learned how to hold her the way Mommy does. She still likes to be held tight against your body, and now that Daddy knows the "baby calming position", it frees me to do more things on my own, like going to the bathroom!

I go back to work July 7th now. I met with my boss yesterday to discuss my work schedule when I come back, and one of my concerns was that I have 15 vacation days and 5 personal days to use by September 1st, or I lose them! With just coming back from maternity leave, I thought for sure I wouldn't get to use many of them. But because of the students working during the summer and less prescription volume, labor has been cut. So actually I'm only going to work 2 days a week (the days the kids are in daycare), and use my vacation/personal days the rest of the days that I would normally get scheduled! This will still keep me at full-time status while only working part-time! This is going to be great for me because then I'm not away from my kids so much right away; I get to ease myself back into the work flow, then go back to full-time in the fall!

Doug will also be starting the nursing program in January. HE GOT IN! The next couple years are going to be very hard for us, but in the end, this will free me up to cut down to part-time for a while, or even quit to be a stay at home mom! This takes a lot of stress off of me. I feel so trapped in my job because I have to work full-time to carry insurance for the family. I want to be home while my kids are young so that I can do things with them and enjoy them at this stage.

So things are going good here in the DeGraaf household. I'll update with more pics soon!