read at your own risk

This is a post about poop--a poop post. I'm writing this because this blog is supposed to serve to document our family life and there isn't any way to do that without including this topic. We've been talking about and thinking about and been frustrated by poop for the better part of four months now and so, really, I've shown great restraint so far on the poop topic. Or more specifically, Kate and poop. Even more specifically, Kate and her poop.

Back in April, John did an intensive potty training weekend with the twins while Erin and I were out of town. I wrote about that back then. At the time they were 3.5 and had not yet shown any interest in training on their own, which is this mysterious quality that I hear about various other children possessing, but none of my girls have been remotely interested in ditching their diapers until we forced them to do so. The other reason we started training them in the spring is that we knew that they would be entering preschool at the end of summer and every preschool I talked to requires a four year-old (or nearly four year-old) to be 100% trained, and so the clock was ticking and the pressure was on for us, two of the proven worst potty-trainers ever.

Fortunately, from that weekend on Allison has been pretty much daytime trained, with only rare accidents. Amazing! A kid that actually catches on to this stuff quickly. I'd heard of such things but had not witnessed it myself until then. Kate, on the other hand, was Kate--stubborn and defiant and only using a potty when we demanded it, and then only to do #1 business. She still pooped in her pull-ups every day and the potty success sticker chart and books and DVDs and candy rewards and such were getting us nowhere. So we let Allison start wearing underwear and we tried some with Kate also thinking that this would serve as some motivation. She usually kept them dry because whenever we were out somewhere and Allison told me she had to use the bathroom I'd make Kate go also. But Kate didn't think any more highly of underwear than she did of the pull-ups and she pooped in them every day too. "Pooped in them" actually doesn't adequately describe these episodes. "Destroyed them" is much more accurate.

When we were going though this (and through this, and through this...) with Erin and I was contemplating the best way to tackle cleaning the most horribly soiled underwear I'd ever encountered (up to that point), John said, "Throw them out. I've worked hard for a long time. I've achieved a certain amount of success in my life. Maybe not a ton, but enough that I don't want to deal with that. Just buy more." And with Kate the underwear tossing and buying has been taken to a new level.

Every single day we discuss poop around here....asking Kate if she needs to go, checking with each other and her daycare on when she went last, and where, and how bad the collateral damage was. We've been celebrating her few successes in every way we could think of and warning her that if she doesn't "go potty like the big girls" she won't be able to go to school with Allison, which was the truth. In the meantime, Kate and Allison got into my first choice preschool for them from off of a waiting list, and our daycare (which the twins attended from the time I returned to work after my maternity leave) announced that they were closing for good on August 8th, and we were still getting no where.

Kate knew exactly what she was doing. We'd see some signs, she'd tell us she didn't need to go, we'd make her sit on the potty for a while anyway, she'd get up and leave, and 10 minutes later Allison would come and tell us, "I smell something stinky over there!" Kate often tried to hide to do her business. John even caught her trying to bury herself under the couch cushions one time.

And on and on it went...

August arrived and still no poop progress. Daycare was going to be closing, where was I going to put Kate when I was working? She couldn't go to preschool like this. Well, she could, but after a few consistent accident days I think the director would ask to "have a little chat" and we'd have to find someplace else for her. But where? I started calling around about new prospective daycares. And then the twins would be split up, and once we lost her spot in this school I feared that we wouldn't be able to get her back in. All of this was making my brain hurt.

I brought the twins to the preschool for a longer visit about ten days ago. I stayed there with them and we spent about an hour and a half getting to know their teacher and the other 4 year-olds. The girls had a great time exploring all of the new things and meeting the kids. "See all these big kids?" I asked Kate, "None of them wear pull-ups. They all wear underwear and use the potty all day, that's why they can come to preschool. Allison is ready to be with the big kids, when you use the potty then can come to school with Allison and all the other big kids too." Now, this is the exact kind of conversation I'd been having with Kate for months, but maybe being there and seeing the big kids made an impression. Who knows what it was, but from that point on things have been different, I've only thrown out one more pair of underwear since, the girls started preschool on monday, and today at preschool Kate pooped in the potty!

I'm confident that Kate gained no sudden understanding of all of this. I think that she knew that she just didn't HAVE to use the potty until now, until she saw that preschool was really, truly imminent. No sense in sparing mom and dad's sanity any sooner than absolutely necessary, they needed a few more grey hairs anyway.

I'm going to remember this and wait for an appropriate time to remind her of these events in which maximum embarrassment can be inflicted. Unless I go insane before then.

horsin' around

Yesterday we tried a new outing, to the annual charity horse show not too far from here. The girls' cousin Sydney met us there so she could show the girls a thing or two about horses at one of her old stomping grounds. Pun somewhat intended. Sydney used to compete with her horse in this show and many others over many years, until about a year ago when she gave it all up. I think she was glad to have an excuse to go back and see some old friends (and their riders), especially since she leaves for college in just over a week.

There was plenty of horses jumping and running in plenty of different arenas all around. And there were plenty of people riding around in golf carts, and sipping wine, and wearing over sized designer hats, and looking altogether entirely overdressed given the fact that they were spending a day in a place that, for all it's attempted high-brow fanciness, was ultimately still a place that smelled like hay and horse poop.


We (I) didn't want to pay to sit in the fancy shaded tents with nice tables and centerpieces and drink service in order to watch the shows.

"Can we sit there and watch?" asked Erin.
"Nope," I answered, "That's where the people with table manners sit. No wild monkeys allowed in there."
So we spotted a free haystack instead, which, as Allison pointed out, was not a decision without its own potential concerns. "If the horses get really hungry, they're going to eat our seats!" she worried.

And later Syd took us around to the stables where she met up with some friends and the girls got to pet some of the horses.


Kate was fascinated by a girl washing her riding boots:


So we sat and walked and walked and sat and had lots to see everywhere we went. For quite a while the girls sat with their backs to the arena and simply watched the horses which were walking along a path to or from one arena or another, which were just as interesting as the competition in the rings I suppose.

a son for a day

On saturday the fergyfive had an addition to the family, Erin's pal Quinton. His dad was out of town (returning that evening) and his mom had to work, so Q was dropped off at 7:30am and spent the day with us. The girls were all very excited and looking forward to this all-day play date.

As we all sat at the breakfast table John announced, "Today I think we'll have a big tea party, and get all dressed up, and DANCE!"
Quinton's eyes got really big and he shook his head and said, "No way! If you guys do that stuff I'm going to leave this house and RUN! We're gonna do boy stuff! We're gonna get big water guns and squirt each other!"
"Cool!" answered John.

So, to Quinton's great relief John got out the gigantic bucket of legos instead of the tea set and the kids went to town with that for a long while. Quinton is an only child and clearly not used to having other kids constantly grabbing and interfering with what he's doing, so he was very easy-going while they played, sharing very readily and helping the twins especially. This sharply contrasted with how the girls played, and screamed, and fought with each other over nearly every individual piece.

Possible alternate title for today's post, or perhaps a sociological study, "Innate gender preferences and differences as evidenced with Legos".

Erin's creation, some sort of tropical equine oasis:


Quinton's creation, an army command station, after hoarding all the little men and various weaponry he could find:

And after a bit of Quinton amassing and fortifying his vast Lego Army while Erin and the other girls fought over who got to play with which lego horse, Quinton attacked and took over the bridge in the meadow.

Next we took the kids to a movie--"Space Chimps" (I'd skip this one if I were you,) though the kids all liked it. John had the good fortune of having Kate on his lap for probably the last half of the movie, and I think she was blocking his view for much of that time. Lucky duck, that John.

After the movie we realized that it was pretty warm out so we got out our massive pool and let the kids cool off for a while and burn off some energy. Quinton loved jumping off of the top and into the pool and the girls usually were smart and got out of his way...usually:


And later while the twins napped I took the big kids out for frozen yogurt and got a couple of really cute photos:


As I sat with the kids at dinner I kept quiet for the most part and just enjoyed the conversation between them and how the dynamic differed from the usual with Quinton's added presense. Normally Erin dominates the conversations, followed closely by Kate, but things were entirely different now--Erin barely said a word and Kate said nothing at all. So I turned on my camera while pretending to simply adjust it, and began filming in the middle of an important debate about what kinds of animals would like to eat them.

I especially like the part, towards the end, where Quinton, who does 90% of the talking here, tells Allison not to talk so much and just concentrate on eating. And I had to keep myself from laughing when he plays a classic annoying game with Erin at the very end:



And shortly after dinner our son-for-a-day was gone again. As loud and crazy as it is around here with three kids, four was certainly louder and crazier, but also fun while it lasted.

my brother's non-big fat greek wedding

I must mark this day on my calendar--not so much so that I can remember my brother's wedding anniversary as much as to commemorate a day when the world and my blog didn't revolve around what my kids were doing.

Very recently, at my birthday dinner in fact earlier this month, my brother Brad asked me, "What are you doing on the 22nd?"
"Um, I dunno, what day of the week is that?"
"It's a tuesday. Wanna come to our wedding?"
"Um.........yeah..........What?" ...is how I responded, I think.

It's not like I totally wasn't expecting a wedding at some point. Brad and Shadzi were engaged, and I was aware of that. For a really long time. They got engaged after he wrapped up working at the last Olympic games in fact, and before he left to cover this year's games they decided to (finally!) make it official. They opted out of a large wedding/party/reception/thing and decided to marry at (a nearby larger city's) city hall with only a few witnesses and a nice dinner afterwards. John and I were two of the four guests invited, along with Shadzi's sister Nikki and her husband, Victor.

I had the city decorate their lamp posts with plenty of flowers for the occasion. I hope Brad noticed and appreciated my efforts.


Before:




The pre-ceremony paperwork. Not a common thing for a wedding photographer (which I designated myself) to document, but then that's not a common haircut for a female either:


Set up, including getting my dad on speaker phone and setting the cell phone on the judge's book for the ceremony:

During:

After (no, I don't have any photos of "the kiss". I was taking photos with Brad's camera at that moment. I was also designated wedding juggler...toggling back and forth between his camera and mine. At several points John had my camera, I had Brad's, Victor had Nikki's camera and Nikki was videotaping, and all of us filming simultaneously. This was a small, but VERY well-documented ceremony.)

And way after. Champagne, wine, beer, shots, cocktails. And somewhere in there was a great meal, and more shots. We may have been a small group, but we didn't drink like one.

At some point in the evening either Brad and Shadzi asked, or more likely, John started offering them not entirely sober yet surprisingly coherent, marriage advice. And a less than sober Victor was particularly enthralled though I'm pretty sure he wasn't in any shape to retain much of what John offered. Brad and Shadzi's wedding day fell on Nikki and Victor's 9-year anniversary, and our 7-year was 3 weeks ago.
"Only seven years?" Shadzi clarified, visibly surprised, "I thought you'd been married, like, twenty years or something."
"It only seems like twenty," John and Victor agreed.
Meanwhile, I think I'm going to look into some cosmetic dermatology services at work.

Regardless, we all had a very good time.
Congratulations Brad and Shadzi!

and be sure to bring home the correct monkeys

John and I like to joke about that with the girls and with each other whenever they'll be going to an animalish sort of place. Mom visited last week and we spent most of a day at the zoo and so the same good advice needed to be reiterated. The girls don't think it's so funny to talk about confusing them with (other) monkeys, but we know better.


It was overcast and a little foggy and nicely cool at the zoo, located in that more-typically-foggy-than-not location. It was a nice reprieve from the heat around here and we actually needed sweatshirts for quite a while. I also brought the stroller along which these days doesn't get much use, and just when one of us thinks about getting rid of it another outing where the stroller saves us from having to carry pooped out (or more often, stubbornly putzsy or ever distracted) twins comes around and it proves its worthiness for a while longer.

The girls had a great day, "enthusiastically" posing for their billionth picture, but this time with giraffes:


...getting up close and personal with the wildlife:


and getting an especially cozy view of a busy grizzly bear:


Erin's favorite activity was reading. Everything. Every sign, every little placard, every bit of educational this or that posted everywhere and we could not move on to the next thing until it had all been read and clarified and digested.

Kate or Allison frequently tried to move things along by flipping through the little displays in order to see the pictures quickly, but Erin ultimately dictated the pace.


Kate's favorite part of the day was the petting zoo, of course. She rushed in there and latched herself onto the first goat that had the misfortune of standing still, and she hugged it and hugged it and talked into it's ear like it was a dear, lost friend. And then all the girls joined in on brushing Kate's new buddy. I could have/should have/might have titled this post, "Kate, the Goat Whisperer."


The girls got to sleep on the drive home. I didn't.