Potty Talk

Hallelujah! Kayla pooped in the potty last night for the first time. I'm not sure who was more excited...me or Kayla. Why would I be so excited by this you ask? Well, let's just say that potty training her brother Matthew was not easy. Actually, it was just plain difficult. So, I am thrilled that Kayla is making progress and more importantly is motivated. I actually have a very funny story about potty training Matthew, but I must warn those that are sensitive to potty talk to stop reading now.

So, Matthew had a lot of trouble learning to poop in the toilet. He hated it. He would wait until the last possible minute (sometimes holding it for multiple days), and then he would go to his room and poop in his pants. Not fun. Especially since the toilet is literally 5 feet from his room. We tried absolutely every technique known to man to try and motivate and encourage him, but nothing seemed to work. It was a frustrating time for us all.

Anyway, on weekends we would have Matthew run around naked. He couldn't poop in his underwear if he wasn't wearing any, right? Matthew hadn't gone for a few days, and this particular morning we knew a number 2 would be inevitable. Matthew went poop on the potty, and we were thrilled. But, remember how I said he would hold it for multiple days? That usually meant that when he finally got around to going, one poop for the day would not be enough.

Sure enough about 15 minutes later, Matthew got a very anxious look on his face, and made a little noise that meant he was really worried. Andrew and I exchange glances, and like the superhero that he is, Andrew grabs our son, lifts him up by the waist, and slings his body over his shoulders for the mad dash to the toilet. Keep in mind that Matthew is not wearing anything on his bottom half, which is pointing directly up to the ceiling as they make their way to the bathroom.

If you have ever seen a prairie dog poke its little head out of a hole in the ground, then you can visualize what happened next. Poop comes out of Matthew and plops on the hardwood floor in the hallway, just as Andrew is taking his next step. Andrew steps on the poop, does a Charlie Brown maneuver, and his feet fly out from under him. Luckily Matthew lands on top of Andrew, who unfortunately landed in the poop. It was like a perfectly choreographed scene in some hilariously gross movie. I still can't help but laugh out loud when I picture it. Luckily Andrew has a great sense of humor, too. I think the only one who wasn't laughing was Matthew. Poor guy.

Ah, the adventures of parenting...

Walking With Dinosaurs

We saw Walking With Dinosaurs on Monday, and WOW!  Very cool!  If you've never heard of it check out http://www.dinosaurlive.com

If it comes to your area, you should see it.  

Don't take your kids unless they are at least 4 though.  Matthew had moments of sheer terror on his face during parts of it.  Seriously, I've never seen the kid quite so scared.  He almost got sick from fright.  We had to "take a break" outside the arena doors and have a long talk about how the mechanics of how the dinosaurs were made, and how people are controlling them from inside the dinosaurs.  I recommend seeing the "how it was made" special before you go to take away some of the fear for your kids.  

Very cool show!

Stressful vacation?

So, I just poured myself a glass of wine here at 8:15 pm.  The kids are finally in bed, and I just took a shower.  Tonight is all about relaxation.  The Duraflame is lit in the fireplace - yes that's right, the Welshes are all about the Duraflame log.  So, why am I so excited about some relaxation?  Because this "vacation" has been anything but!  

I guess I thought, no...I guess I hoped that this 2 week vacation that I am on would be relaxing.  A time to unwind and spend fun time with the family.  But, the Holidays are a crazy time and it took a few days to get ready for those.  Then after Christmas, it took a few days to get the toys put away and get the house organized.  Now it is almost New Year's and my vacation is coming to a close, and I'm totally and completely exhausted!  

Our kids are great, but my God I'm sick of being their referee.  I swear they are growing because they are constantly asking for food (even though they both just out-ate me at breakfast, and it's only been one hour since).  I tried to read today and I was bombarded by questions and requests and the need to break up fights.  Uggggh!  I might be going a little bit crazy.  

And to top it off, I decided to get a free 7-day trial at 24-hour fitness because I thought this would be the perfect week to get some free workout time in.  But I haven't gone yet because there is no time, and they call us every day to ask us when we are going to come in and activate our free pass.  Leave me alone already!  I wish I could come in, believe me!

So anyway, enough of the pity party.  Life is great and I'm happy to be here.  Perhaps the wine is starting to kick in?

Christmas was great fun.  The kids got way too much stuff as usual.  Santa brought Matthew a train and he was just thrilled (even though it was a steam engine and not a diesel, it was still "just what he wanted").  Kayla got a tricycle from Santa.  Andrew and I got a new MacBook, which I am typing on as we speak, and we finally went wireless in our house.  I also got a new iPod nano - red, of course.  We spent Christmas at my parents house, and the Kansas relatives were here.  We've been to the zoo.  Lots of fun.

I managed to sell my rug on Craigslist today - see previous post for some background.

We're gearing up for 2009, which promises a ton of fun vacations already planned.  Can't wait for those!  Disneyland, Phoenix, the Outer Banks, and Mexico.  Perhaps they will provide some relaxation....  Who am I kidding?  Travel with kids is never relaxing.  But at least one of them will be with dear friends who I dearly miss.

The wine is definitely helping...I've decided that I need to schedule a massage and facial for Friday.  

Happy New Year to you all.  I hope you have a wonderful, safe, and healthy 2009!

An interesting morning...

Kayla is going through a major independent streak lately. She is almost two and a half, and wants to do everything herself. You can't touch her when she's getting dressed, because she wants to do it herself. It has progressed this week to us not even being allowed to watch her get dressed. As a side note, she is actually doing quite well dressing herself, although she occasionally needs help with getting a shirt off or finding an arm hole.

This morning was no different, she practically yelled at me to get out of her room (a preview of the teenage years to come?) so she could dress herself, and she shut the door behind me. A few minutes pass, and I start to hear some whining coming from the room. This is usually followed by, "Mommy, I need help," but this morning the whining just continued. I thought, "good, she's going to keep trying and not give up - an admirable trait." I decide I'll poke my head into her room to see how she's doing.

I open the door and see Kayla struggling to get her shirt off, with no pants and no diaper on ... and I smell poop. Getting nervous now, I ask Kayla, "did you poop?" and she says yes. My next question is, "where is the poop?" She tells me it is on her diaper, which is sitting over on the floor. I take a closer look, and sure enough there is a log of poop on top of her diaper - not IN the diaper mind you. A pit starts to form in my stomach as I realize this can only end badly. "Kayla, how did the poop get there?" She replies, "I poop my hand." Dear God no.

A major clean up effort ensues, including a ton of questions to try and determine where to focus my cleaning efforts. Did she poop on top of the diaper? Did she poop on the rug that I'm trying to sell this week on Craigslist and then pick it up? Or, did she poop on the hardwood floor and then carry it over to the diaper? Or, did she simply use her hands like a catcher's mitt? The answer to all of these questions was "yes," so it remains a mystery. A horrible disgusting mystery. I did the best I could cleaning the entire room, but only Kayla knows how things really went down in there with the poop.

An unexpected visit

This weekend we had a wonderful surprise! We got a text message late Friday night from our very good friends in Colorado asking if we had plans on Saturday and if we wanted visitors. We've known Nikki and Mike Zeman since college. Nikki and I were sorority sisters at CU, and Mike went to the Air Force Academy. Mike is now a pilot with Southwest Airlines, and had a long stop over in San Jose Saturday night. He convinced Nikki and their two boys to come out for a visit as well. We get to see them once or twice a year if we are lucky, so we were thrilled at the idea of having them come for a visit.

We had so much fun! Matthew was so excited to have two boys to play with, and they all slept on the floor in his room (until Cooper woke up screaming, but that's another story). Kayla was very excited to see Mr. Mike again (who she latched onto at our last get together at Disneyland). The adults stayed up very late enjoying beverages and several rounds of Catch Phrase. And wouldn't you know it, the kids got up VERY early. One of the Zeman boys thought he was still on Colorado time and decided to wake up at 4:45am, and the rest of the kids followed shortly thereafter. Yikes! Four hours of sleep was not nearly enough for me.

It often feels like our lives are so rushed, and our weekends can be filled with mundane chores and activities just to try and catch up. It was such a breath of fresh air to have those things thrown out and replaced with great friends and laughter. Life is short and we have to take advantage of those opportunities whenever we can. I'm looking at my to do list today thinking, "my God, I got nothing done this weekend." But I wouldn't trade it for the world...good times spent with great friends is priceless.

Visit to Santa

Matthew has been obsessed with gifts this year. He has been tearing pages out of catalogs and showing us what he wants for Christmas now for several weeks. He will show us the pages and ask us what we like best on the page, and then proceed to tell us all about the things that he wants. This happens multiple times a day. It's gotten so bad that we had to hide the torn-out catalog pages from him this weekend! He has changed his mind 6 times already about what he wants Santa to bring him. First it was a train, then an aircraft carrier, then a track for his cars, then the aircraft carrier again, then the train, and so on...

So, we went to see Santa yesterday at the mall. Matthew and Kayla were excited to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. I was excited that Matthew was finally going to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. In the car we realized that Matthew had brought along one of his catalog pages to show Santa. Yikes! I'm thinking that it probably is not cool to show Santa a catalog page, but figured that other kids had probably done worse, and Matthew wouldn't be the rudest kid to ever sit on Santa's lap with his silly catalog page. But Andrew was not going to have any part of it. "No showing catalog pages to Santa!" Matthew threw a small fit, saying that Santa would bring him the wrong thing if he didn't show him the catalog page. I told Matthew that Santa would know what to bring him, but that didn't seem to calm him down. Andrew told Matthew he was acting like a little brat and Santa would bring him a lump of coal. That didn't help. Finally, we reminded him that Santa was watching him right now, and he finally decided that he should stop. We all got out of the car and headed into the mall...

The actual visit with Santa went off without a hitch. Last year, when Kayla caught a glimpse of Santa, she climbed up Andrew like a monkey escaping a lion attack. This year she actually sat on Santa's lap and told him that she wanted a "tricycle, a pink tricycle." Matthew told Santa he wanted a "diesel train." Santa told the kids to look up at the mall skylights to see if they could see the reindeer, and there were actually antlers up there! Very cute. The pictures were not great, though...the kids had that fake, uncomfortable smile on their faces. Oh well, we didn't want that $40 picture package of wallets and a key chain anyway!

When we got back to the car ready to head home, Matthew says, "if Santa brings me a Thomas train instead of a diesel train set, I'm going to be very upset." This of course prompted a stern lecture from both parents about being thankful for getting anything, and how some kids don't get toys at Christmas, and some kids are starving in Africa. My lectures always seem to come back to the starving children. Oh well, you've gotta love kids and Christmas!

"Busyness" as Usual

So, the Welshes have been busy as usual. Nothing too exciting, but I'll catch you up on what we've been up to.

Football season is over! Hooray - we have Andrew back. Unfortunately, Andrew's team didn't make the playoffs this year. It's what you would kindly refer to as a building year (no size, and little talent - not a good combination). People always ask if I am happy when they don't make the playoffs because the season is over sooner. Actually, no. Andrew and the other coaches (and the players, too) put in so much time and effort into the season that you really want them to do well. Adding a couple more weeks of playoffs to the end of the season isn't a big deal when you've already survived three months worth of it. Andrew and I are always glad when the season is over, though, no matter how the team does. It's REALLY nice to have him around again on the weekends.

We celebrated Andrew's birthday last weekend and this weekend. Now for the next two weeks I can say that he is a "year" older than me.

We bought mattresses for the kids, and Kayla moved to a "big girl bed" this weekend. She is so excited to be growing up, and I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. We had to get extra long twin mattresses for our kids because a twin bed is only 6'2" long, and for 90% of the population this would probably work fine, but these are Welsh kids we're talking about. I think Matthew will definitely be over 6' tall, and Kayla may even hit the 6' mark herself.

Matthew graduated from his first round of ice skating lessons. He has really gotten the hang of it. He's taking the second level now, and then he can sign up for hockey when he turns 5. Although now he says what he really wants to do is play baseball. He is very excited about being able to play t-ball on a team this year, and I must admit I'm looking forward to watching him play, too.

Andrew and I are looking forward to having 2 full weeks off at the end of this year. We have this time off every year, and it's always a great time for us to hang out as a family, after a very busy Fall. We usually keep the kids in daycare for a couple of days the first week so we can shop for gifts, see movies, clean the garage, and just hang out together. Can't wait for some time off!

So much to do before then...so little time.

For crying out loud!

So, I am rather annoyed that NBC aired that incredibly heartbreaking episode of ER on TV last night. I hadn't watched the show in about a year, watched it for the last half hour, and ended up turning it off in tears. Darn you NBC!

I am not a cryer. I don't cry at movies or books, or sappy wedding commercials. It's not that I have no feelings, it's just that things don't get to me very easily. I also am very careful about what I choose to watch and read. I avoid Oprah books with a passion. If it's on Oprah's book list, it will immediately be scratched off mine. Don't get me wrong, she chooses good books I'm sure. But the topics are way too depressing. They are all about overcoming intense personal struggles, and I just don't want to read about that. When I go to watch TV or read a book, it's because I'd like to have a few moments to escape reality and be entertained. Being depressed is not entertaining for me. Real life is tough enough, and in my lifetime I've already faced my share of grief and challenges to overcome. I don't want to watch other people suffer, and I don't want to read about other people's pain when I am trying to escape for a short while.

Now, again, don't get me wrong. I care deeply for others, especially my friends and family. Helping them through their struggles and sharing their pain goes with the territory, and there is nothing I would not do for someone I care about. The thing is, when someone else is hurting it hurts me too, and when given the choice for how to spend my free time, I choose not to experience those feelings when watching TV and movies, or reading books.

So, on to the ER episode... it was a flashback episode that showed Angela Basset's character (a doctor on the show) and her husband suffering through the death of their 5 year old son. Hello? Who wants to see that on TV? I have an almost 5 year old son, and this is not something I want to think about. The death of a child has to be the most painful thing that anyone can experience. It's one of those things that, as a parent, when you find yourself even starting to think about losing your child, you immediately make yourself think about something else because the feelings are so incredibly intense and painful. You don't even go there! I didn't realize what the episode was about when I turned it on, and I had to turn it off before it ended because it was just too hard to watch. It took me quite a while to recover after that, too.

So thanks a lot NBC. Thanks for the pain and sadness when I was just trying to sit down and unwind before bed. Thanks for the nightmares that I had about my children last night. Next time you should put a warning label on your shows. Forget about warning me of brief nudity or violence, how about warning me "this may cause intense sadness and depression." I'll certainly think twice before I turn that show on again.

Kayla cracks me up...

Kayla is always doing something that just cracks us up. Last night I was putting Kayla to bed. We had just finished reading stories, and she turned her bedroom light off. Sometimes we sit together in the rocking chair in her room and snuggle for a few minutes before she gets into her crib, so I asked her if she would like to snuggle for a couple of minutes, and she said yes. But then she told me to get up from the rocking chair. Confused, I said to her, "Kayla, I have to sit in the chair if we are going to snuggle." She proceeds to crawl into the rocking chair, turns around to sit on her bottom, extends both arms in front of her, and says, "come here Mommy." She actually wanted me to sit on her lap for a change! So, I oblige her and partially sit on her lap (hardly any weight on her, mind you). She says, "too much. Off Mommy. I go bed now." That girl is just too funny.

Halloween 2008

Here is an update on the Welsh Family's Halloween festivities. The kids and I finished up our decorations for the yard, and had such a great time doing it. It's hard to tell who had more fun...me or the kids. Our favorite decoration (and the favorite of passers by) is the Witch Crash (see photos below). We also added a lawn cemetery this year, and made all of our tombstones, and then we made a huge spider out of trash bags. All ideas came from the internet, of course, because I need inspiration (i.e. other people's ideas) to get crafty.


I'm pleased to announce that we had the coolest house on the block for Halloween this year, and since I am a huge fan of Halloween, this gave me much pleasure. Other houses in the neighborhood go all out for Christmas with Santa on the roof and tons of lights. The competition is steep for Christmas. But Halloween was open for the taking. I told Andrew that we had to get in there and claim it before someone else did. He gave me that look he gives me when he thinks I'm doing something silly, but isn't going to say anything because he knows how much fun I'm having.

We carved two pumpkins, and Matthew was all into it, while Kayla didn't like the idea of getting her hands messy. She is a tough little thing, but if her hands get sticky, she is not pleased. Dirt on the hands is ok, but sticky or goey is out of the question for Kayla. The pumpkins turned out great, but unfortunately we carved them the Sunday before Halloween, and by Halloween morning they were moldy and pumpkin juice was running down our front porch. Yuck! Into the trash they went, and after a quick trip to Michael's, a fake carved pumpkin went into their place. So, I'm quite sure we had the ugliest pumpkin ever thanks to my 20 second, last minute carving attempt.



Halloween was spent trick-or-treating with my family in downtown Los Altos during the day. The kids had a lot of fun. Here is a pic of Kayla and Matthew in their pirate costumes with their cousins (my sister's kids...Will the firefighter, Emma the chef, and Marie the ballerina). At night the kids went trick-or-treating with friends Colin and Jared, and since they were dressed as Batman and Robin, Matthew felt compelled to bust out last year's Spider-Man costume.


So, now it's on to Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can't believe how fast time flies. The Welsh family is having lots of fun, and life for us all is still crazy busy. Football season is winding down, though, and we're all looking forward to having Andrew around more.