Back to... Normal?

It's been a helluva week. I wrote before that my boys were sick... well I guess they weren't content to keep it to themselves. A day after my last post, I picked up the germs. I'm pretty sure we all had the flu. I was exactly one day behind Dave so I was able to gage my progress based on how he was feeling. Let me tell you it's no fun taking care of two sick boys and a non-sleeping, nursing girl all while you're running a fever and generally feeling like $*#@. Thank God Lauren didn't get sick too. (One of the many benefits of breastfeeding!) Thankfully, by Saturday night were were all feeling much better.

Even though Lauren skipped out on the flu bug, she's still not 100% lately. I'm pretty sure her issues are all teething related. I've been waiting for those pesky bottom middle teeth to pop through, and I'll be singing praises when they finally do. My normally happy baby has been very irritable lately. The worst part is her sleeping has been much affected. She's been up a lot in the middle of the night. So therefore, Mommy's been up a lot in the middle of the night. The other night I just couldn't take it anymore so I left her lying in her bed just to go have a little breakdown. She's been a little better the last couple of nights though, so maybe those suckers are going to pop through the gums soon.

And things haven't been much easier with Mason either. After he started feeling better, he began to have some pooping on the potty aversions and is taking fewer and fewer naps. So I've been having to do extra laundry and cleanup and getting less downtime right as I was literally sick and tired.

Thankfully, it's Grandmamma and PoohPa to the rescue! My parents are coming for a visit tomorrow through Monday, so maybe I can actually get a nap in sometime this week.

Sick Boys

I guess there's always some sort of illness going around, but somehow we usually manage to avoid it. We've only taken Mason to the doctor three times in his life (once for a reaction to food, once for high fever, and once for a persistent cough) but we've never had to get any sort of prescription. He's never taken any medicine except an occasional dose of cough syrup (which I'm convinced doesn't work) or Motrin.

Not this time though. Poor Mason has been sick all weekend with a fever, runny nose, and an earache. Even though he slept much better last night and seems normal today (except for not having an appetite), I kept him home from school this morning. I guess if you've gotta be sick, he picked a pretty good weekend. With the weather as miserable as it was, we weren't going to be doing much outside of the house anyway.

Unfortunately, it looks like Dave's coming down with something now. He has a slight fever and a cough. I tried to keep him home from work today too, but he went in anyway. He said he would just close the door to his office. I told him to put a Keep Out sign on the door. I hate that he's so busy at work that he feels like he can't even take a sick day.

I'm a Big Kid Now

I think it's now safe to say (without jinxing it) that Mason is fully potty trained! He had been doing pretty well in pull-ups, but was still wet quite often, even though he would go to the potty several times a day. I felt like we stalled a bit, so we moved from pull-ups to underwear about a week ago. It ended up being just the push he needed. (Well that, and a bit of extra bribery with M&Ms and animal crackers.)

Underwear Day 1 was not much fun. For some reason, I started on a Friday (when Dave wasn't home) and we had 5 accidents. I spent my day taking Mason to the bathroom, cleaning up pee, or washing clothes. Poor Lauren was a bit neglected and she let me hear about it quite a bit.

Underwear Day 2 was a bit better. We went out to enjoy the nice weather and put Mason in a pull-up while we were gone, but he stayed dry and even used a public restroom. He only had a couple accidents that afternoon, but it mostly involved poop.

By Underwear Day 3, he was much better. By midweek, he was pooping in the potty. And he's even been coming to get us when he wakes up in the middle of the night and has to go. Usually, he wakes up dry in the morning. He's also much better about telling me when he needs to go, so now I don't feel like I have to ask him every 15 minutes. He's in underwear full-time during the day, even if we go somewhere, and we're just going to use up the pull-ups we have for nighttime until they're gone.

The only things we have to work on now is getting him to go by himself (which I know will take some time) and and having him pee standing up, especially in public restrooms (which I haven't quite figured out since he's too short to reach).

Ahh, my baby's growing up. I can't tell you how happy all this makes Mommy. And if you're a Mommy, I probably don't need to.

What a Difference a Week Makes

It's hard to believe that just six days ago, we had a pretty big snow fall (well pretty big for Charlotte anyway) which dumped about 4 inches in our yard, and today it was in the upper 70s and beautiful outside!

We had to take advantage of the georgous weather and we wanted to see something new, so we loaded up and headed out to the Martha Rivers park in Gastonia. If you've never been, it has a fantastic playground. Mason had a great time wandering around the castle-themed forts. Then we enjoyed a picnic lunch in the shade. Here are a few pics of us on our picnic blanket:

In Like A Lion

Our first significant snow of the year! Of course school was cancelled today, but at least there was actual snow on this snow day. It was beautiful coming down last night and so pretty this morning.

It was hard getting Mason outside to play... he was a little freaked out by it all I think. (He's got his parents' Florida blood after all.) Dave went out in the backyard this morning to show him how fun it was, and all Mason said as he was watching him through the window was "Daddy's crazy!" When I finally got him out, he was ready to go back inside as soon as he felt how cold the snow was in his hands. (Poor deprived kid doesn't have any mittens.) It took about 4 minutes.

At least I got a few pictures. Good thing because it's almost all melted now.

New Milestones

Lauren has hit a few milestones over the last couple of weeks. At 4 1/2 months she's now steady enough to play in her activity center:
She can sit up on her own for about 30 seconds:

And she's great at getting up on her elbows during tummy time:

She has also started rolling over from front to back.

But my favorite thing lately is how much she loves watching Mason. She is entertained by him more than anything else. And no one can make her laugh like he can. I'm trying hard to get a video of the two of them together, and I will post one if I can ever get it in time.

Potty Like a Rockstar!

We're singing praises over here because it finally looks like Mason is becoming potty trained. For the last week he's been peeing on the potty and staying dry for most of the day. Poop, it seems, is another issue, but I'm happy with baby steps for now.

I'm not sure what clicked in his little head, but one evening last week as Mason was getting in the bath, he saw Daddy go potty and he wanted to go too. So Dave got him out of the tub, put him on the potty, and off he went! He's been getting better and better every day. He even stayed dry at school yesterday! He's not quite to the point where he asks me to go yet, but he goes willingly most of the time when I ask him.

I still have him in Pull-ups and haven't quite braved going to underwear yet, but that will be the next step. I'm waiting to see how he does for a few more days.

After MONTHS of working on this off and on, I'm so happy to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. My hope is that we get this done by his 3rd birthday (April 6). I'm not sure if that's realistic or not, but that's my goal.