Potty Training Success...finally!

Elijah is 3 years and 2 months old today. For the last few months I have been wanting to get him potty trained but he hasn't seemed interested. A while ago he began saying that he would start NEXT WEEK. After several weeks of this, on Monday morning when he woke up and said "wait til Next Week", I said "Today is next week. You have to wear underwear today." So, ever since Monday he's been wearing underwear. On Monday he had 6 accidents and never attempted to go to the potty. On Tuesday he had 6 accidents and didn't really try to get to the potty until the very last time at daycare and then he tried to go but he it was already too late. On Wednesday he had on girl pants and panties when I picked him up because he had gone through all 6 of the outfits that I had sent but had a 7th accident. That night I really wanted to give up. We stayed home from church because I knew that would be a disaster. Yesterday when I picked him up the teacher reported that he had tried to use the potty 2 times with some success. Last night - at home - he made it to the potty 2 times 100% successfully and he wasn't wet this morning when he woke up. He said, "look, I dry mommy" Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! I am so excited. I think it was just a battle of wills and that making him wear the underwear and not going back to diapers worked! He is getting so big and soon I will have 2 big boys!!

Elijah funny

Mom: Now Elijah remember when you need to pee, RUN to the bathroom so you can use the potty.
Elijah: But I not supposed to run in the house mommy.

Menu Planning Monday

I did this once and then haven't done it again. So, I thought I'd give it another try: Here is our menu for this week through the 20th. I don't go to the grocery store but about once for the whole month so here is what I've planned so far for the month. I am trying to work on decreasing our monthly food budget. This month I am using the menus4moms recipes and weekly plans that I have gotten with my new subscription to that service. So far for the month of January I have spent $162. Hopefully I will not have to spend more than about $50 for bread, milk, juice, fruits, veggies to get us through the rest of the month. That will be a decrease in our monthly budget but I'm not sure how much exactly. (Of course part of the reason is because we will be out of town the last week of the month.)

Monday 5th - Brent work, boys at Papaw and Nana's, Kathy quick supper with mom before going to mom's award presentation
Tuesday 6th - chicken tetrazzini and brussel sprouts
Wednesday 7th - ham, mac n cheese, green peas
Thursday 8th - mushroom beef patties, mashed potatoes, cabbage
Friday 9th - Brent at work, we will fend for ourselves (leftovers, cereal, etc...)
Saturday 10th - Brent's work christmas party

Sunday 11th - leftovers or out to eat
Monday 12th - spaghetti pie, toast
Tuesday 13th - Brent's work - leftovers for us
Wednesday 14th - beef/vegetable soup
Thursday 15th - beans and hot dogs
Friday 16th - aloha chicken
Saturday 17th - ?

Sunday 18th - ?
Monday 19th - cheeseburger pie
Tuesday 20th - ?
Wednesday 21st - Brent's day to work; leftovers, cereal
Thursday 22nd - ?
Friday 23rd - get ready for trip - leftovers/sandwich etc
Saturday 24th - 31st - we will be on a trip and boys will be staying with grandparents everynight while we are gone

Harris Teeter shopping trip

I didn't take a picture this time but I did have a successful trip doing triple coupons at Harris Teeter over the weekend. I bought 36 items and my total cost was $33!!

Elijah drinking coffee...

I'm so glad to finally have someone to drink coffee with me!

Christmas 2008

We had a wonderful Christmas. I really loved and appreciated the chance to get to spend time with friends and family. I loved the chance to spend time with my kids who are growing up faster than I can believe. We celebrated for a week long - going to my stepbrother Jeff's house to celebrate with his family on Tuesday, going to my Dad and Karen's for Christmas Eve with them, Brandon, Kelly, Maddy, Chris, Andrea, and Chevy. On Thursday, we stayed home until about 1 and then went over to celebrate with Brent's mom and stepdad, Brent's grandmother, his brother Shane and his family. On Christmas night, we went over to my mom's and celebrated. On Friday, we stayed home during the day and then went to Brent's grandmother Nikki's that evening to celebrate with the extended Crotts' family. On Saturday, we celebrated with my family on my mom's side and played bingo and enjoyed getting to spend time with each other. That night we went over to Brent's dad's house and had dinner with him, Adam, and Shane and his family. On Monday night, we went over to have dinner with our friends Nathan and Erin and celebrated with them and exchanged gifts. Whew...no wonder I am so tired. That's the result of a family that all lives relatively close together and several divorces and remarriages in the mix! We love all of our family so very much and were so glad to be able to fit them all in!

Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job with picture taking this year. I took some pictures of Nolan, Elijah, and I in the Christmas parade in early December (they were "toys" in Santa's workshop) and I took pictures on Christmas Eve at my dad's house but then....I forgot.

Fish

We have finally gotten our fish tank and fish going. We have had some bumps in the road but I think they were all good learning lessons.

This has been a Nolan's birthday - Elijah's birthday - Christmas present. Nolan had been asking for fish for quite some time and our friend Kevin just happened to have a fish tank that he could sell to us. (We WILL get the money to you and you WILL take it by the way.) The aquarium also just happened to be a 55-gallon aquarium so we started big time instead of what I was thinking...about 10 gallons! I went out and bought a filter, aquarium rocks, and fish food. Then we found out that the water had to "cycle" for about a week before we could put fish in it. Kevin brought over a heater so we could get the water to the correct temperature since we finally decided that we wanted a variety of tropical fish. We started with a few guppies from Joe (Brent's dad) and Adam (Brent's brother). Nolan and I were in Winston-Salem one day and went over to the Pet Supermarket and I let him pick out some fish. Another challenge - figuring out which fish could go with the guppies. We got a couple of neon tetras, a couple of glofish, some platys, and Nolan picked out a lemon tetra which was his favorite. We put the fish in and were excited to have fish in our aquarium finally. I went to the store and got some small algae eaters, 4 zebra danios, and a guppy that I thought was cool.After about a week, I noticed that the fish didn't seem to be very active and then noticed that one fish had white stuff dripping off of it. Our first fish sickness - ICK - and luckily Adam came over and showed me what to do about it. Also, he told me that I needed to be checking the pH which I had totally forgotten. We finally took care of the ick but I'm sad to say that we lost about half of our initial 20 fish (including the lemon tetra which Nolan loved). We had our first lesson on dealing with fish death and then Nolan and Elijah quickly got over it and promptly began to love to "flush" the fish. (BOYS!!) When that was pretty well resolved I realized that the water was about 68 degrees!!! Brent and I finally figured out that the heater had cracked when we changed part of the water (again...our fault!) SO....I went out and bought a new heater.

Last Sunday, Nolan and I went to Wal-Mart and purchased some more fish - 2 fruit tetras, an "ugly" algae eater, 3 more glo-fish, 3 more platys. So far, all of the fish that we have now are surviving and doing well...I think! Below is my personal favorite. It's one of the fruit tetras: