Hibernating January

In December, Thora suddenly had interest in potty training, thanks to Dancy getting her excited about pretty underwear. So I did what little I was willing to do before Christmas: I got excited with her, we picked out her treat (biggest purple bag of Skittles possible!), and discussed that we would start after New Year. While happy to finally be ready to potty train this three-year-old, I savored the little freedom I had left.

Momma got contacts and Samson got a haircut! Shad did the cut while I was at my appointment, so it was a surprise for both of us when I came home. Samson was the first to notice I wasn't wearing glasses.

This is Thora being Princess Sofia talking on the phone to her sister, Princess Amber.

Hooray! She peed! Lori got many of these pictures, and some of poop when that finally happened. Aren't you glad you aren't Lori?

Potty training Thora took the. whole. month. She picked up peeing on the toilet pretty quickly, then I gave her underwear and accidents were all over the place. So we spent a couple days keeping the underwear clean. Then I gave her pants and the accidents were all over the place. So we spent a couple days keeping the pants clean. Then we ventured out in public. And had those accidents. And then there was the week when she pooped in her underwear DAILY. Seven or eight days straight. It was rough. I definitely had moments of crying like the mom in this video:

And then finally, FINALLY things clicked and I declared her to have become a big girl, sent Lori LOTS of poop emojis, and earned her reward: a date with Lori to get her ears pierced and have ice cream. I think that was achieved in February though. Text records show February 9th to be the date. One month and one week to potty train. Thora did voluntarily give up naptime diapers, which was more than any other kid did. So she's at a one-a-day for bedtime status and I'm happy to stay there for a while now that I'm back in the thick of potty training again with Samson.

Here's a fun story: I mostly stayed home as much as I could while potty training Thora. But there was that one time that I had to go to Walmart to get new tires on the van...and was there for nearly 2 hours while they changed the tires and oil...and Thora was wearing underwear (which she did keep clean and even peed on the toilet, but was still stressful for me), Katie threw up twice, and Sam's nose was running constantly. I was so glad when they paged me to pick up my van! Oh, icing on the cake: the cleaning lady at Walmart never got to the vomit the whole time I was there. Don't know what she was doing, but they were definitely paging her for over an hour.

Back to pictures...

Samson just got it into his head one day that he needed to have tape on his hands. Kept it up for a couple days.

Maaaany months ago back in Kansas we found this huge Lego Friends amusement park set on clearance. Shad and I kept it hidden in our closet until Christmas and gave it to the kids as a group gift. We all participated in building it.

Mom made a chocolate smoothie for breakfast! Yay for sneaky spinach!

Art class. Always colorful.

Adorable

Sometimes they exasperate me.

Milk in the hair.

From milk in the hair to falling asleep on the couch reading books. Parenting is a roller coaster.

And then cuddling on me while sleeping. This almost never happens anymore!

Because we live in Colorado where it's dry as heck and I humidify like crazy. And we order a lot from Amazon. Tommy's art.

I'm trying to remember, but I'm thinking this was the first snow that stayed for more than 12 hours. Or maybe I woke up and surprise! This was there. Dunno. But I still love this window view.

Frozen flakes on the roof.

Got a new fridge! That was an exhausting day. The fridge that was already in the house had a bad leaking problem. As in, I had to always keep a cup to catch the drips and if the cup got bumped or pushed out of place, water everywhere. So we managed that for a while, but the deal breaker was the day I suddenly heard the water pouring into the cup. Found this fridge on facebook for $125 and the guy delivered it. Missionaries helped install it while Shad was at work. 

Dancy built this.

Snow day! I figured out a good system for managing the kids playing in the snow and still keeping the carpet at the entry clean and dry: double layers of towels and processing one kid at a time. I'd sit them down and pull off all the wet clothes, then take them over to the fireplace to dry in front of the fire. Kids took to the couches with blankets to watch Netflix and warm up.

So that system worked well until Tommy's coat was too close to the fireplace and was actually touching the glass and the zipper melted.

And thus, January ended.