Bribery, Day 1 - Crash and Burn

Well my bright idea of bribing Darcy with Dora stickers was a miserable failure on day 1. There was absolutely no success at all. Accidents all day long.

When we were asking her about it at supper she responded with, "Well, I don't know about that." She sounded like Forrest Gump!

I'm not giving up on the plan after only one day, but it is frustrating. She seemed so excited about the stickers when I dropped her off, so it was really surprising when she didn't respond to that.

Lynn, I don't think it's a game she's playing. Honestly, I think she's got the Haskell "I don't use bathrooms other than my own" thing going on.

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Bizarre Update:

I don't understand this child! We're at home today and she just told me she's ready to go to school. I said she needs to do big girl pee-pee all by herself before she can go to school. She said she can do it already. So we went into the bathroom where she proceeded to take off her own pants, pull over her stool, get up on the toilet, pee and wipe her own bum without any help from me at all! She needed some help getting her pants back on, and washing her hands because our sink is too high even with the stool. So, is she playing a game or is it just her being uncomfortable peeing in someone else's house?

If At First You Don't Succeed, Bribe, Bribe Again

Warning: Potty Post!!!

We had a few "accidents" (translation - Darcy didn't want to stop playing to go to the potty) last week at home, which I mentioned here. Those seem to have corrected themselves. If we take her to the bathroom, she will go, so she can get back to what she was doing. It's still rare that she will tell us that she has to go, but at least she's going when we take her.

At the babysitter's, it's apparently a completely different story. Last Thursday when Nick picked her up the babysitter told him that Darcy had been refusing to go to the potty for a few days. BA would take her to the potty, Darcy would sit there and do nothing, then as soon as she got back to her toys she would say, "I did pee pee." Sure enough, her pull-up would be wet. What's up with that? If you have to go and you're already sitting there, why not just go? What kind of a game is she playing with us.

She wears pull-ups at the babysitter, but only wears "big girl" underpants at home. Like I said earlier, we haven't had an accident at home in more than a week. If she wore underpants at the babysitter she'd be changing her clothes constantly, so BA asks for pull-ups instead of underpants.

I'm desperate. I know the kid knows how to pee in the potty, so why won't she do it? The box of Valentine cards we bought for her to give out to her friends came with a sheet of Dora the Explorer stickers. I gave the stickers to BA this morning and asked her to give Darcy one each time she successfully used the potty. Darcy seemed to be pretty pumped about that, so I'm hoping it works.

Any thoughts from any other potty trainers out there? I feel like I'm losing what's left of my mind!

Lighter Post

After writing my last post, I decided I should put up something a bit lighter too.

I watched the Oscars last night, even though I hadn't seen any of the nominated movies. Of course one of the reasons I watched is for the fashion.

As soon as I saw Nicole Kidman last night I said, "Eeeeewwww". I thought she looked terrible. I thought the vividness of her dress washed out her incredibly pale skin and I couldn't figure out that huge bow at her neck. I was very disappointed. Yet she's on all the best-dressed lists today.

Is it just me? My best dressed award goes to either Kate Winslet or Reese Witherspoon.

Upsetting News

When I first had Darcy, one of the best things I did was to sign up for a group called "Just for Moms and Babies". It was run by our local health unit, and it was a 6-week course for first time moms. You meet once a week for six weeks and you learn practical things about caring for your baby. Honestly, most of the stuff was pretty basic but the best thing about this group was meeting other women who had babies the same age as yours. It was wonderful to compare notes, share tips and just be understood by women who were going through the same things you were going through.

Some of my friends who signed up for this group didn't connect well with the other women in their group. That was not the case for me. Our group hit it off right from the start. We had an excellent group, we all seemed to click right away and we really enjoyed our time together. When the six weeks was up we decided to continue meeting on our own because the support we got there (not to mention the adult conversation) was invaluable. So, I still really appreciate all those women today even though we don't see each other as much now that we're all back to work, and many of them have already had second babies.

I ran into one of the women, S, on Friday. She told me she had recently run into another woman from our group, A. A now has two boys, one 2 1/2 the other just about 7 months old. Just before Christmas, A was diagnosed with breast cancer that appears to be quite aggressive. She has now had a double mastectomy and is undergoing chemotherapy. I'm completely blown away by this news. She's 30 years old.

A is the type of woman who takes incredible care of herself. She eats all organic foods and she is very natural in her approach to life. This diagnosis must be so hard for her on so many levels. She is a passionate breast-feeding mother, so having to give that up with her son at such an early age was heartbreaking. I can't imagine that she's thrilled with having to fill her body with chemicals either. And all of that is not to mention the fear of all the "what ifs..." that she must be facing right now. A is very optimistic and is a fighter. She can beat this.

Please pray for my friend, her husband and their two beautiful boys. I don't know what age a mammogram is recommended, but maybe it's something we should all be asking our doctors about.

Burn!!

Nick took the car on Tuesday afternoon to do some errands while I was at work. He emailed me and let me know everything he had done and mentioned the fact that he had gotten a haircut. He keeps his hair super-short now, and it always looks to me like he's just gotten a haircut. I didn't think anything more about it.

He picked me up at the end of the day and I still didn't think anything about it. We went to get Darcy and as soon as she saw him she said, "Oooh, Daddy! Nice haircut!"

Nick said, "Well Darcy, thank you. I'm glad SOMEONE noticed my haircut!"

Burned by my own daughter. Ouch. Just to rub salt in the wound, she hasn't stopped talking about the haircut since.

Was That Funny?

Darcy is in a stage right now where she always wants to be making us laugh. She's making up silly songs all the time. Last night's was "Chocoloate, chocolate, chocolate milk, Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate milk. It's my favourite milk." There was a closing line to that particular opus which I can't seem to remember. Whenever she comes up with something new she always asks, "Was that funny?"

However, one of her favourite ways of making us laugh is by burping. Every time she burps, instead of saying "excuse me", the first thing out of her mouth is "Was that funny?" It's hard for me to say no when Nick is giggling. So we're trying to tell her that it's only funny if she says "excuse me" first.

It's worked a couple of times.

Odds and Ends

Not much to report today, just a few miscellaneous things to make up a post...

The Amazing Race All Star Edition has started and it promises to be a great race. I'm really looking forward to it. I just can't decide who I'm going to pick to win. All the teams are really strong, that's why they're there. Melissa thinks it will be Rob and Amber, but I don't think so. I think a lot of the other teams are targeting them and I think they could go out earlier than expected for that reason. I like Dustin and Kandice.

Last night when we got home we all seemed to be a little tired and out of sorts. Darcy hadn't had a good day with sharing at the babysitter's. We asked her to do something while we were getting supper ready and she sat down on the kitchen floor and put her chin in her hands and said (in the saddest little voice imaginable) "I've had a rough day." We couldn't help but laugh!

I'm down to a half dose of my nausea medication and feeling pretty good, so I'm hoping to be weaned off it completely very soon. However, I don't have any pants that fit me. I seem to have a muffin top in everything I wear. I'm definitely not ready for maternity pants yet and I can't to wear sweats to work so I'm in a real state of limbo right now!

Ultra Sound

The ultra sound was perfect this afternoon. There is one, healthy, active baby in there. The baby danced around the whole time we were watching.

All the measurements look good and there doesn't seem to be any indication of chromosonal abnormalities. There was also a good, strong heartbeat of 169 bpm which we got to hear.

Needless to say, we were very pleased.

The picture is actually two side-by-side profile shots of the baby's head and torso.

Big Steps Backwards

Darcy has been doing great with her potty training for months. Yet over the past few days we've had a huge regression. She's had accidents two nights in a row because she's too busy playing to stop to go to the bathroom. Whenever we suggest it's time to go, it's like we're offending her with the suggestion. If we take her against her wishes, she freaks out. Then, once she's in the bathroom she'll go with no problem.

My parents were here over the weekend and on Saturday evening we were all in the family room together. My mom noticed that Darcy was walking funny so I looked more closely and sure enough, her pants were wet. We finally got the whole story out of her and she told us she had peed by the table. I checked the floor there and it certainly showed evidence of having been recently peed on. Incidentally, in case you've never heard this trick, cover the wet area with corn starch then allow it to dry. It will all then vacuum right up.

Last night Nick was on the phone with his Dad and I was relaxing on the couch. Darcy was playing with her toys and suddenly I heard a trickling sound. "Darcy, are you going pee?" "Yes, Momma". Still on the phone, Nick whisked her up and carried her to the bathroom. The damage to the carpet was considerably less this time.

So what's causing this regression? Any ideas? Is she just enjoying her playtime too much? Is it the talk of the new baby? She certainly knows when she has to go pee, so why has she suddenly stopped telling us? The babysitter mentioned that she'd had a couple of accidents there last week too. It's all very frustrating.

On a more positive note, we have our first ultra sound this afternoon. I'm very excited about getting a look at the new baby. I'm a little nervous because my ultra sound requisition form says that I have a positive history for twins, so I'll feel a lot better when I see one solid heartbeat. I'm sure we'll have pictures to post later.

Internal Thermostat

Pregnancy hormones are a lovely thing. My body temperature is so out of whack right now it apprears that I don't seem to have any sort of internal thermostat at all.

Those of you who know me well know that I am always cold. It seems that no matter what the temperature, I find a way of being cold. Now I'm still cold for the most part, but I tend to heat up very quickly at the slightest change in circumstance.

For example, the other night I had a cup of hot chocolate while watching TV in the evening. After I drank it, I couldn't regulate my body temperature at all. I had been huddled under a blanket on the couch, with fleece sweatpants, a t-shirt, a big warm sweater and thermal socks on. After I finished the hot chocolate I had to get rid of the blanket, socks and sweater and even then, just in my little t-shirt and sweatpants, I was unbearably hot.

Then we went upstairs to get ready for bed and within 30 seconds I was shivering! It made no sense at all.

And since I've been pregnant I've been doing something weird that I can't believe Nick hasn't blogged about yet. Even though it's been the middle of winter and we've been having incredibly cold nights, I've needed to have the ceiling fan on in our room. Although I may be cold when I go to sleep, I know my body will heat up uncontrollably while I sleep and I'll wake up because I'm so hot. I've been sleeping so much better with the fan on. I'm not sure about Nick.

New Public Service Announcement

Attention moron drivers of the fine city of Windsor. If you are driving on an exceptionally snowy and windy day, and you see a woman skidding in a car in front of you, it is not necessary to give that woman the finger.

I don't think I need to get into the reasons why. It's common sense.

Amazing New Recipe

I made these last night. They were absolutely delicious. We had picked up a bag of mini peanut butter cups over Christmas, but had barely eaten any of them yet because we had also picked up a bunch of other sweets. I'm so nauseous that I'm not that interested in sweets and Nick rarely eats them anyway.

For some reason yesterday I got a craving for chocolate/peanut butter brownies. I did a quick search on the internet and that recipe is what I found. Because it used a brownie mix (although I'm sure you could use your own brownie recipe) I got them made in about 2 minutes (obviously not including baking time).

I just prepared the brownie mix according to the instructions on the package, pretty much ignoring the recipe, then put the peanut butter cups in once I had them in the muffin pans.

In the words of Dora The Explorer's backpack, "Yum, yum, yum, delicioso!"

Morning Sickness Update

I been feeling pretty great since I've been taking the Diclectin for morning sickness. I've been eating like a fairly normal person and have managed to put my weight back on.

When I went to see my doctor last week he suggested that I start weaning myself off the medication to see how it went. I woke up feeling pretty good yesterday, so I didn't take my morning dose. It didn't go well. I did OK for most of the day, but felt pretty rough by the end of last night. I'm still feeling pretty rough today. I took the morning dose again this morning.

I'm coming to the end of the first trimester, which usually means the end of the morning sickness. I'll see how the next few days go and then I'll try to reduce the medicine again.

On another note, my hip measurement increased an inch in the last week. Cool!

Blast From the Past

I'm not sure how many Camp Selkirk alumni I have reading this blog, but I do know at least two of my "faithful" readers are married to some of the guys we went to or worked at camp with.

It was a sad day for many of us when they closed Selkirk a couple of years ago. Major Fred Waters has now started this blog for former campers and staff members. It's a pretty sweet walk down memory lane.

Check it out, post some memories and there's even an opportunity to submit pictures. I'll be checking back often.

Sesame Street Pictures

Check out our Flickr page to see some of our pictures of our big night out last night.

Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?

Darcy's new birth certificate arrived yesterday afternoon as we were getting ready to leave to attempt crossing the border for Sesame Street Live. We were going to try to use her birth registration letter, as well as some discharge information we had from the hospital to get across, but it didn't end up being an issue because the birth certificate that was supposed to take 15 days took 4. Sweet. Mine still isn't here, because they needed to get a signature from me, but at least hers is taken care of. That's wonderful.

She was so excited through the whole show. They did face painting in the lobby before the show so she got Elmo painted on her face. She wore her Elmo shirt. She was in her Elmo glory. We've got lots of pictures and I'll get them posted here or on Flickr as soon as we get them all uploaded.

When the characters started coming on the stage at the beginning of the show, she looked so completely thrilled. She called them by name and got more excited as each new one arrived. They gave Elmo a big entrance of his own and the whole place seemed to erupt. Throughout the show, Elmo, Zoe, Rosita and Telly had big roles. Every time the four of them were on the stage she'd call out "Elmo, Zoe, 'Sita, Telly, you're back!"

Her only problem was that she kept asking if she could go down to talk to them. She didn't quite understand why she couldn't do that.

The show was over an hour and a half long, starting at 7:00. For a girl with a pretty strict 8:00 bedtime, it was a late night. She was starting to get really tired by the end of it. It was 9:30 before she got to bed. She went to bed with the biggest smile on her face I've ever seen.

It was so exciting for us to watch her at the show. By the end, she was even dancing in the aisle. I was a little frustrated at the rock concert prices they were charging for merchandise, but Darcy certainly didn't notice that we didn't buy her anything. At intermission the ushers brought out enormous bouquets of Elmo helium balloons. They could be purchased for a mere $10 USD each. Of course no sooner did people start buying them than a few balloons started heading to the ceiling. There's $10 those parents will never get back. I hope none of them got conned into buying another one!

All in all, a really fun night. We hope Darcy remembers it for a long time. We'll never forget the look on her face!

Why A Pregnant Woman Shouldn't be Left Alone

There were two moments last night when I realized why a pregnant woman should never be left at home alone.

The first was when I realized that I was sitting on the couch eating pickles directly out of the jar. I didn't really think about it at first, it just seemed like a natural thing to do at the time. Sad. Very sad.

The next was when I was flipping around channels and came across 8 Simple Rules. Now, I never watched this show, but the episode I happened across last night was the one where they were explaining John Ritter's character's death. Oh man, it was devastating. My pickles had been put away (I needed to get rid of them or else I would have eaten the whole jar!), and all I could do was sit on the couch and cry. I turned it off and went to bed.

I'd had a similar experience last week while watching a rerun of the Friends finale. It was just heartbreaking to me to watch these TV characters saying goodbye to each other.

I need to get a grip!

Wallet Update

I'm managing to get most of my ID replaced without too much difficulty. I have a temporary driver's license, and have reported all my other ID stolen and have info on what to do at my doctor's appointment this afternoon without my Health card.

The hard part now is just accepting that everything is gone (bye bye food processor that I was going to buy with my Christmas GC's, bye bye laminated birth certificate, all that). I'm also mad that I have to pay so much to replace all the cards ($35 for each birth certificate, $10 for the driver's license, $10 for each SIN). I feel like I'm getting robbed twice!

Thanks for all your words of encouragement and support. I've heard from a few people about keeping birth certificates separately from your wallet because of this, but that's not really done when you live in a border town. You always have the mentality here that you might cross the border (even though I personally only do it a few times a year), so you always carry your border-crossing ID with you. It's just what we do here. We've got tickets for Sesame Street Live this Thursday night, which we bought in August! We think we've got enough ID to get across the border and back, so here's hoping!

A Kick in the Teeth

A co-worker of mine has been off sick for a couple of weeks. In order to help out I was working in her office for a while this morning. While I was in her office, someone stole my wallet out of my office.

Not only was my own wallet stolen, but my petty cash from work was also stolen. Both of them were in my purse, under my desk in my office way down the hall separated from the rest of the building.

So, all my ID is gone, my bank card, credit cards, everything like that is all gone. Darcy's ID is gone, along with her immunization record. Two HBC gift cards that we got for Christmas are also gone. I'm just sick about the whole thing.

When we went to the bank to report my Visa card as missing we found out it had been used at 10:45 this morning. I had figured that the wallet had to be taken between 10:00 - 11:00, so that makes perfect sense.

The next few days are going to be pretty frustrating for me as I chase all over the city trying to get all my important documents replaced. Doesn't that sound like fun?

Cravings

I admit I stopped on the way home last night to buy pickles. Because of my lack of knowledge of pickles though, I was mistaken about the name of the pickles I wanted. I thought they were "Bread and Butter" pickles, but they weren't. I wanted "Yum Yums" and that's what I got. They were just as tasty as I hoped.

Stef asked in her comment yesterday if I'd had similar cravings when I was pregnant with Darcy and I thought that could make an interesting post.

Early on last time, all I wanted was a chicken caesar pita, and it had to come from The Pita Pit. I just couldn't get enough of them! Then, towards the end of my first trimester, my family came for a visit and we went out for dinner to celebrate my birthday. I ordered a chicken dish and as soon as I took the first bite, I knew that if I swallowed it I would throw up all over the table. I haven't been able to eat white meat chicken since. I can stomach dark meat, but my love for chicken has never returned.

A little later, Nick and I were watching That 70's Show and in that episode, Kitty won a year's supply of hot dogs. She spends the rest of the episode trying to come up with interesting ways to eat hot dogs. Well, I needed a hot dog after that was over, and we didn't have any in the house. That's how I learned that New York Fries makes great hot dogs. The hot dog phase lasted a while too.

A really bizarre thing happened during the hot dog phase. Over Christmas, while visiting at my Mom and Dad's house, my brother-in-law was making a hot dog for my niece's lunch. Usually that would have made me desperate for a hot dog. This one made me nauseous. When I told Steve that, he started to laugh and said it was a chicken hot dog! So my disdain for chicken clearly carried over to the hot dog realm.

Then I went through a hot chocolate phase. I had to have a mug of it every morning at my desk. This was one of the most delicious phases.

Finally, my pregnancy with Darcy has been the only time in my life when I enjoyed Hawaiian pizza. Normally I didn't like the combination of pineapple and tomato sauce, but then it was the only pizza I wanted to eat.

So there are my cravings stories from last time. We'll see what happens this time, besides the yum yums!

How Pregnant is That?

The church where I work operates a full day care here during the week. They've got a cook who prepares hot lunches for the kids every day. If there's lunch leftover, staff members can have some too. It's a sweet deal.

This morning, as I was going about my business I smelled pickles. Now, I don't really enjoy pickles, but I have never smelled anything as delicious as that pickle smelled this morning. So when lunchtime came, I went to see what was for lunch and to get some pickles on the side.

There were no pickles!

Clearly my spidey senses had failed me on that one. I left the kitchen with some delicious buttery potatoes, but no pickles. I still kind of want some pickles. Sweet pickles. The ones my Grandma used to call "Bread and Butter" pickles. I think I'm going to have to stop on the way home.