First Christmas Gifts

I know we just had Thanksgiving, but we won’t see my parents again before Christmas so we celebrated early with them yesterday.  I love Christmastime, love decorating for Christmas, and am always sad to take down the tree.  So we decorate the day after Thanksgiving around here.  I love that!  It helps me get more into starting up the advent box on the 1st and gets us all in the spirit.  We were decorating together yesterday and Caleb was so way into it this year.  ”I just love Christmastime!” he’d say.  And in response to me putting the angel on the top of the tree “Oh I love the angel, she’s beautiful” (spoken with awe and wonder)  And of course he ran to get his guitar and proceeded to sing, “its Christmastime, its Christmastime.”  I don’t think he could have delighted this mama’s heart anymore if he tried.  I love that he was so into it filled with little 3 year old wonder. 

We had a great time with my parents over this past week of Thanksgiving and enjoyed our little Christmas celebrations with them as well.  I got this great book as well as this one from them for Christmas and I’m really excited about both!  They also gave this book to Bob, which I’m really looking forward to reading after he’s done.  Yeah for great books! 

And because we celebrated early, you get to see one of my Christmas projects early too.  These will hang above my parent’s couch in the living room that I helped them decorate.  I’m so excited about them as they are my first attempt at some fabric wall art.  They are simple but suit my parents style and living room quite nicely.  I’ve had another idea for fabric wall art brewing in my head for a couple of years now.  It would be for above our bed, so we’ll see if I attempt that sometime now that I got my first fabric wall art under my belt.  I also didn’t have Christmas paper down from the attic yet so I used brown paper and strips of fabric to wrap their present.  I love how that turned out and may have found a fun way to wrap the rest of this year’s presents. 

                      

Closet cleaning challenge

I have many closets to organize and they’ve been on my to do list forever.  I’m tackling this utility closet first.  So here are the before pictures.  There are no after pictures because I’m in the process.  I’m planning on taking out everything, including that rod and shelf and installing shelving in there.  Of course I want to paint it and discovered some usable paint in the basement this morning that will suit perfectly.  Plus I want some peg board to hang my brooms and mops on one side and more peg board on the other to hang tools.  I’d like to find inexpensive storage boxes and organize everything and label it all.  Essentially give this closet a major overhaul. 

So would you like to join me in this closet cleaning challenge?  Don’t you have a closet you’ve just been meaning to give a major overhaul?  Am I inspiring you to tackle one of your own nightmare closets?  If so, send me your before picture and I’ll post it here.  That’ll give you and me inspiration to clean out our closets and get more organized.  Then send a picture of it all done and we can celebrate the before and after pictures.  Maybe I could come up with a prize for the best decorated/organized closet!  Anyone want to take me up on this closet cleaning challenge?

 

                

Potty Party Day

So I’m sure you didn’t realize that this is a craft blog AND a potty training blog.  Hey we got creative with the party today, so it counts!

I decided on a whim this morning to give potty party day a try.  We blew up balloons, hung streamers from the shower rod and stocked up on underwear, juice, salty snacks, wipes, towels and lots of books. 

The kids were way into having a party in the bathroom and I think sat for like an hour straight in the first attempt to go.  They actually sat mostly on and some off of the potty for about 3 hours straight, 2 pee successes for alice, none for caleb, 4 peeing in underwear accidents for alice, 1 pee in underwear for caleb and 1 on the floor 10 seconds after he got off the potty!  I was getting really tired of it, but they were loving it!  We read books, drank juice, ate salty snacks, drank juice, played potty roll play with finger puppets, drank juice, etc etc.  Alice got a little playhouse from bob’s parents when they were last here and it came with these little white chairs, well alice thinks they are potties.  She’s always taking one of the fisher price people around the house and telling them what a good job they did on the potty and now they get an “eh eh” (m&m).  Hilarious!  So we used those little people and the white “potties” too.  All of the little finger puppets had a turn on the little white potties.  

By lunch time I was officially tired of potty day, but got a second wind after lunch and we headed back in.  Alice actually pooped and peed on the potty after lunch!  I’m not surprised because they both almost always poop after lunch.  I was hoping Caleb would, but he didn’t.  We went outside to play for half an hour before naps, with diapers on and that’s when he decided to go, oh well.  A full day of sitting on the potty and he didn’t go in it once.  In the middle of the morning “session” he was begging for his diaper, so I put it on him.  So I was very surprised when I put him down for naps that he said, “when I get up from nappies, I wanna try on the potty again!”  I was shocked.  I told him how proud I was and that we could keep trying and see what happens.  I was hoping for at least one success for him, but he’ll get there.  

This was just kind of an experiment to see if they really are ready or not.  It seems Alice is more ready, tho it also seems she doesn’t feel it coming to tell me its coming and make it to the potty.  So we’ll see how they do.  I may just decide to hold off on efforts till they seem more ready, but with Alice going in the potty, she is doing well already!  Caleb definitely has the personality where he needs a lot of encouragement to try new things.  Somehow I just don’t see him just all of the sudden deciding one day that he’s ready to do it.  I think he’s going to need prodding and a little pushing.  He’s very good at encouraging Alice in her success, and I think that’s giving him some motivation too.  Even if he didn’t go, he definitely had a lot of fun at potty party day.  Well I’m partied out, or should I say I’m pooped?  Time for a nap.

Here’s the kids excited and trying, plus a pic of our party stash.

    

Potty Talk

I’m finally starting to get sick of changing diapers and think I’m ready to start taking potty training seriously.  Alice is very interested and will ask to use the potty, so I want to take advantage when she’s interested.  Caleb on the other hand, just isn’t interested.  We just had the following conversation where he used one of my phrases I use with the kids when they constantly pester with the why question.

“Caleb aren’t you ready to stop having owies on your bottom and use the potty?”
“no”
“But what about your big boy underwear, don’t you want to wear your Thomas underwear?”
“no”
“But Liam, Owen, Charlie, Oliver and Abel all use the potty!”
(no comment)
“So why don’t you want to use the potty?”
“Mama, I don’t know, that’s just the way it is!”

Cracked me up.  Any potty tips? (we do M&Ms if he tries)