By now I think we have ALL hear of the Silly Bandz craze and just about every

www.sillybandz.com $4.95 for a 24 pack

one of our children have jumped on the Silly Bandz band wagon….My 4 year old daughter included. Yes, my 4 year old! I was hoping to get away from this trend since no one in her preschool had them but, alas, one of her best friends in VA was our next door neighbor and he was a big kid…Kindergarten to be exact! She immediately fell in love when he came home and gave her some sort of a purple princesses stretchy thing to put on her wrist and has been asking for them ever since!

So we all know what they are, that the kids love them, that they trade them with their friends and they’re ‘LIKE THE COOLEST THING EVER!’…but did you also know they can be used as a parenting tool?

Yes, a parenting tool! Throwout the stickers, charts, and treasure boxes…we’ve found a new REWARD SYSTEM!

Yesterday, I finally broke down and bought a pack of these crazy rubber bands and brought them home for Miss P (oh, and by the way they have generic ones in the dollar bin at Target!). But, there was a catch! After I let her oooh, and aaaah over all the really cool shapes and prance around with them happily on her wrist I explained the rules.

I told her that those were her Silly Bandz and she could keep ALL of them….but….on the condition that she did not break any rules. If she breaks a rule I take away one silly band. I also told her that she can earn them back, and more (because apparently you have to have them strung halfway up both arms in order to look cool).

These are someone the things she may get one taken away for:
1. whining-this is a big problem in our house lately
2. not cleaning up her toys
3. talking back-she likes to negotiate just how many chores she’s going to do and when she’s going to do them
3. fighting/not sharing with her brother.

*she gets one warning for each offense and then OFF WITH THE SILLY BANDZ!

Some ways she can earn them back:
1. doing all of her chores for the day/not whining about it
2. doing something extra to help someone

This was how ridiculous my car looked on the final leg of our move!

Thanks to Delmar Racing and a great group of local family bloggers, we spent our Sunday at the Track!  The P’s had never been to the horse races and they were instant fans. P1 donned her ‘fancy dress’ and geared up to watch the ponies.

Delmar put on Family Fun Day on the infield with tons of entertainment and activities for the children complete with bounce houses and pony rides!  But what the P’s enjoyed most was the racing action!

And don’t worry if you missed it…every Sunday throughout the summer is ‘family day’ and there are plenty of other events down where the surf meets the turf!

You can check out the Summer Concert Series on Fridays at 4:00 or head out any Sunday for Family Day with entertainment in the infield for the kids!

Not sure about taking the kids to the races?  Take them to Camp Del Mar!  The kids enjoy activities, entertainment, lunch, and are supervised at all times while you enjoy yourself at the track. Open to ages 5-12.

To check out the full schedule of events at the Delmar Race Track go here.

If any of you have ever potty trained a child (or  2 or 3) you know this: Potty Training Stinks!

And to make it even worse, these days there are SO many different options in potty seats and methods to use to try and coerce your child into doing the deed on the toilet.  From potty chairs, to potty seats, children’s books to a ‘potty party’ help is here!  Well, I don’t know about help but I’ll share what I now know and make you feel better that it isn’t easy and your not alone in cleaning pee off of carpets.

I have successfully, NOT potty trained my 4 year old daughter and we are getting ready to potty train our 2 year old son, all in time for baby #3 to arrive and stink up the house with dirty diapers again!

Now I say NOT potty trained because if there is one thing I have learned it is that children do things on their own time and most children are stubborn (mine more than others) and lets face it, they are going to do it when THEY want to, not when WE want them to. The best advice that I ever got when teaching P1 to use the potty is: “she won’t start kindergarten in diapers so stop worrying about it.”

That’s not to say that there aren’t a few things, like a new potty seat, to try to convince them that it’s the ‘cool’ thing to do.  Here are some of the ones that we have tried in our house.

Safety 1st Musical Talking Potty & Stepstool

This is the Safety 1st musical talking potty & stepstool that can be found on www.safety1st.com and sells for $19.99.  I’ll be honest in saying that I bought it for the sole reason that I found it on sale somewhere and thought the concept looked good.  It is supposed to ‘flush’ and play some music.  ‘Supposed to’ because I couldn’t figure out how to attach the handle and music box correctly so we never used it.  And when you close the lid it’s a great step stool.  There is one big problem with this chair though, there is no cushion, it’s flat across and really uncomfortable to sit on.  It is easy to empty though, because the there is nothing you have to take off to get the cup out.  A little too easy since my daughter never used it as a potty and instead put snacks in it and dumped the cup out very frequently.

Safety 1st Pretty in Pink Comfy Cushy Potty

The Safety 1st Pretty in Pink Comfy Cushy Potty can be found at Babies R Us and is only $16.99.  this was the special potty chair that my daughter picked out because it was pink!  And it worked!  She loved this chair and because it has a cushioned seat it was very comfortable to sit on.  The downfall of the cushion is that, lets face it, kids don’t ever get it all in the toilet at first and the cushion would soak up any pee that landed on it.  I tried everything, soaked it in lysol, bleach, you name it and still couldn’t get the smell out.  The lid on this one also closes to make a great step stool.  There aren’t any fancy sounds or songs but I think this one is great for comfort and price!

Elmo 3 in 1 potty chair

The Elmo 3 in 1 Potty Chair can be found at Walmart and sells for $21.50.  This is the seat that my son chose for his potty training.  He LOVES Elmo.  This Potty can be used as a Potty Chair, a Potty Seat on top of the toilet, and as a step stool.  But, it takes some reconfiguring to change it up so we just kept it as a potty chair.  I found that this seat is great for larger toddlers (my son is very tall/big for his age and his butt didn’t fit comfortably onto many of the other seats), and it’s also great for boys since the splash guard is large and covers the whole area making it less likely for them to pee OUT of the chair and onto the floor.  Elmo is pretty cool too, when you press his hand he shouts out encouraging comments!

Of course my son quickly decided that he didn’t want to use a potty chair at all and wanted to use the big toilet like the rest of us which brings me to my last option:  the potty ’seat’ that fits onto the top of the toilet.

Dora Potty Seat

This Dora potty seat, as well as many others like it, can be found at places like Target, Walmart, Babies R Us and sells for around $12.  I think potty ’seats’ are great for transitioning smaller bottoms onto the big toilet but they also are better in theory than they are in practicality.  First, small children usually can’t get themselves up onto the potty so unless you have a stair contraption to help them get up, you will still have to do a lot of work to get them on and off the toilet.  Also,  it is really hard to position them on there just right and that usually means Pee on the floor!  Probably not great for beginners but definitely something to consider for a skilled potty goer who may be slightly afraid of the big potty.

Other tips on toilet training:

1.  Sing Songs (make them up if you have to).  A favorite in our house is “pee pee in the potty!”  sung while dancing around doing a conga line!  And the Hand washing song:  “top and bottom, top and bottom, in between, in between, rinse them of and dry them, rinse them off and dry them, now they’re clean!”  to the tune of Frere Jaques.

2. Candy rewards:  many people choose to use candy such as M & M’s or mini-marshmallows as rewards.  Usually 1 for a pee pee and 2 for a poo poo.  This backfired on me and my daughter would only go for a candy or say ‘No I don’t want a candy’ when she didn’t feel like going.

3. Read books:  make sitting on the potty relaxing.  reading books or even playing a game can help accomplish this

4.  Lots and Lots of Praise:  When your child DOES finally make it in the potty make a HUGE deal out of it.  Sing, Dance, Clap, call Grandma and Granpa…

5.  Don’t push it:  They are all ready on there own time.  Don’t force them or they will REFUSE to go and then you have a whole other problem on your hands.  And remember…none of them go to Kindergarten in diapers so don’t worry about it!

Good luck and Now, if you’ll excuse me…I have to go clean some more Pee off the carpet!  hee hee

Tuesday I will hit 27 weeks in my pregnancy, which means I am entering into my third trimester!  Woo hoo!  I am in the downhill stretch…just 13 weeks to go!  It also means more lab work (boo!), a glucose screening test (yuck!), and since I am RH- a Rhogam shot (ouch!).

Oh, but that’s not all!  I had my first doctor’s visit here in CA yesterday and I was informed of some more ‘news’…So far this pregnancy has been one surprise after another!  Literally, from finding out I was pregnant and telling my husband over the phone to the scariness of the subchorionic hemorrhage that I dealt with in the first trimester!  It looks like this baby is going to make Mama worry through the whole thing!

I was assigned to a midwife at Miramar since we ‘thought’ all of the issues had resolved themselves and the pregnancy was now progressing as normal.  The first thing she said to me after introducing herself was “so have they told you what is going on with the placenta?”…UH, NO!  They hadn’t!  Seems there was as issue spotted on my 18 week ultrasound and I had to do a follow up ultrasound at 23 weeks.  When I asked what the follow up was for they had told me because of the ‘babies positioning’ they weren’t able to get all of the measurements they needed and couldn’t confirm a 4 chamber heart.  NO mention of a placenta problem!  When I went back in for ultrasound at 23 weeks they took all their measurements told me the baby looked great and sent me on my way…again NO mention of placenta problems!  Fast forward to our move and 230o mile drive across country, I am meeting with a midwife for the first time to find out there is a problem and that my care will be transferred over to a doctor and my appointments will all be at the hospital office from here on out!  We will be doing ultrasounds every 4 weeks and most likely starting to monitor the baby weekly at 32-34 weeks.

So what’s the problem you ask?  Well unfortunately the midwife did not give me an ‘actual’ diagnoses and the doctor will be able to go into more detail with me when I meet with her on the 5th of August.  The way it has been explained is that the placenta has embedded itself into the uterus a little deeper than it should which has made the edges thicker than they should be.  When this happens it makes it hard for the baby to get all the proper nutrients so  they will use the ultrasounds to do Growth Scans on the baby to make sure it is growing appropriately.  The other risks are that the edge of the placenta can become detached causing bleeding and putting me at risk for preterm labor.

I am looking forward to my next ultrasound and doctors appointment to find out more and to see how everything is.  I am very happy that they were able to catch this (they don’t always) and now we can take the proper precautions in making sure that me and P3 are both okay.

Until our next update!

As many of you now know, we recently moved from VA to CA.  It has been quite the experience but we are finally getting settled in and I am able to share it all with you.

The first leg of our road trip consisted of my husband and I driving from Washington, DC to Arizona where the two P’s were staying at Gigi’s house.  Let me tell you, there is nothing like your babies being in another state to motivate the drive!  We drove through 10 states, a total of 2300 miles in just two and a half days (56 hours to be precise)!

I am not a fan of road trips, in fact, up until this point I had not been in a car longer than 12 hours and all of my roadtrippin’ had been completed in the southwest.  Well that all changed with this move!  Oh, and did I mention I was 23 weeks pregnant at the time????   Here is our trip in a nutshell:

Unfortunately, our drive started out with an accident that resulted in us sitting in 2 hours of traffic to make it 30 miles!  Once we got out of that we were headed southwest through VA and into West Virginia.

*Did you know?  (or really did you care?) that Orange County, VA is the home of James Madison-thought I’d give you a little history lesson.

Let me just tell you, the drive through VA/WV is NOT fun…it is all through the mountains and the freeway is a toll road!  Yes that’s right, there you go winding your way down a steep hill when what do you find at random intervals along the way?  Yep, a person in a booth wanting your money.

Next we were on to Kentucky!  The plan was to make it to Louisville before we stopped for the night and we ended up staying in Corydon, IN just outside of Louisville…it was almost 3 am!

In the morning we completed the 4 hours through Indiana, Illinois and into St. Louis, MO where we would be stopping to hang out with my husband’s Grandma and Brother.

Santa Claus, Indiana-for any of you Christmas Freaks (like me) out there!

St. Louis Arch-Gateway to the West!

Busch Stadium-Yep, we are Cardinals Fans!

After chatting for a while and playing a very competitive game of ‘Phase-10′ we set out again, with the hopes of making it to Amarillo, TX before stopping for the night.

We headed southwest through Missouri where I had the pleasure of meeting a state trooper while passing through Rolla, Missoura!  (hee hee, insert southern Missouri accent here).  I was given a warning, made fun of by the hubs who had been sleeping in the passenger seat and we were back on our way…with Cruise Control set!

OOOOOOKlahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the planes…ya, I got a little annoying with my songs for every stage of the road trip.  Anyway, just warning everyone out there who may also be driving through Oklahoma…it is another one of those ‘toll road’ states.  This time it cost us $12 to make our way through!  And to satisfy any of you with a dirty mind, here’s where we stopped to fill up on gas

We made it about 100 miles from Amarillo when we decided to stop in Shamrock, TX for the night.  At this point it was around 2am and the next day was the home stretch into AZ so we wanted to get some sleep.  If you all are planning a road trip through the middle of no where, may I suggest one thing…stay the night at a Holiday Inn Express, they are new and clean and located right off the freeway in just about every po-dunk town along the way!

Amarillo by morning….this was it!  we were on the home stretch and I got to see my P’s that evening! (and it also happened to be July 3rd which meant we got to spend the 4th with the babies swimming and grilling by the pool with all the fam!)  This leg consisted of nothing but a bunch of Wide Open Spaces (yep, I sung ‘em all!) so I’ll just show you in pictures…

Stinky Cows in Texas

New Mexico State Line

New Mexico Desert

Arizona State Line

Saguaro Cactus-such a beautiful site since I new we were soooo close!

And we were there!!!!  Of course we still had to drive from AZ on into CA with the P’s but we had a week of hanging out at Gigi’s and the 5 hour drive was nothing compared to what we just completed!  And this is what was waiting for me in AZ:

My Little Firecrackers!

July 1st was my husband’s promotion to Staff Sergeant.  Since we were in the middle of our move and the kids were with my mom, I was able to go and take some great pictures!  The Promotion Ceremony took place on the Parade Deck at Marine Barracks Washington, 8th & I…the perfect way to end his tour as 33rd Color Sergeant of the Marine Corps!  I am so proud of him!

With his CO

Receiving a Navy Commendation Medal

Staff Sergeant Promotion

Pinning

Swearing In

Color Guard Marines

Grab Some Deck

Probably the worst part of being military and moving around is having to say goodbye to some great friends along the way.  We left a friend’s house this morning, after saying goodbye, and I got a little teary eyed.  Peyton said to me, “Mama why are you sad?”.  I explained to her that I was very excited to be heading back to California but I am also sad to be leaving such wonderful friends.

And today was even more emotional for me because I also took my babies to the airport to fly with my mom to her house in Az.  I have never been away from my little peanuts except for overnight and this time they got on a plane without me and it will be four days before I see them again!  I miss them already!

We are now all checked out of housing and staying in a hotel for the night.  Tomorrow we will officially be leaving but not until my hubby gets promoted!  Promotion ceremony will take place around noon and then our adventure will begin!

…but there was yet another change of plans!

At this point I don’t even know how many times they have changed dates on us. The moving company did send two ladies yesterday to pack everything and aside from running out of paper to finish the last of the garage, our whole house is now in boxes.

The truck was supposed to come this morning to load everything but the guys that were assigned to help the driver decided they weren’t going to show up for work. Now, the plan is to come at 7am tomorrow morning and load.

Today also happens to be P-daddy’s birthday….and I can’t make a cake since everything is packed We did have Donuts for breakfast and are planning on heading to the pool later.

The rest of the week should go as planned. Monday they are loading the truck and I have my last ultrasound, Tuesday will be spent cleaning and getting ready to check out of housing, Wednesday I am dropping the P’s off at the airport (because I have the best mom in the whole world who is going to fly my babies to her house in AZ while hubs and I drive), and Thursday we have P-daddy’s promotion ceremony before we hit the road and are outta here!!!

Whew! That makes me tired just thinkin’ about it! Hope nothing else changes!