What a Life!

I got some new books today.

I mentioned a few months ago that I was getting rid of paperbacks I didn’t want anymore via www.paperbackswap.com. At the time, though, I didn’t know how I would be using my credits. I am not one to enjoy reading beat-up books, and used books that you get for free are not going to be in perfect condition or anything. I even considered requesting books that I could donate to a local shelter, you know, stuff people might want to read when they’d just been evicted and were spending the night sleeping on the floor. But I just didn’t know which ones to request.

Then it occurred to me: Ben is rough on his toys. Steve has these toys he had when he was a kid and they are in perfect condition…until Ben starts playing with them. We’ll just say they now appear to be the recipients of a lot of love. Ben loves books too. One of the things I’ve always wanted for my children that I didn’t necessarily get to do when I was a kid is to read the classics. Like Stuart Little, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Old Yeller. So I went on a requesting spree and used up almost all of my credits on childrens’ classics. Most of the books we’ve gotten have been in pretty good condition. But when Ben gets through with them – once he’s old enough to read them – I’m sure they’ll be well loved. Until then, the plan is that I’ll be reading aloud to my boys every day, reading them stories from books while they play. That way I’ll have a chance to catch up on the classics too. I’m so clever…

I got four of those books today, but that wasn’t all. I also placed almost simulatneous orders with amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com last week. I ordered enough from each to qualify for the free shipping. The books from amazon.com arrived today.

One of them is Raising Your Spirited Child which was recommended to me by a friend with whom I was discussing pottytraining earlier this week. She said it talks about various personality traits and has really helped her understand how to work with her child. And no, your child doesn’t have to be bouncing-off-the-walls kind of spirited in order for this book to be helpful. I’m anxious to read it.

Another book I ordered was Setting Limits with your Strong-Willed Child. Supposedly it teaches you how to set limits you can enforce and not waste your time with ones that drive you and your children crazy because you cannot clearly enforce them. While I have always strived to reach that standard with the instructions I give my children, I am very interested to hear what this author has to say. Stay tuned…

Finally, a potty-training book. I love Elizabeth Pantly. Her No-Cry Sleep Solution is invaluable, in my opinion. She doesn’t just tell you what to do. She goes through all the possible problems and all the possible options and helps you figure out a solution that is right for your child. It sounds like her No-Cry Potty Training Solution is the same way. I’ve resigned myself to the notion that potty-training Ben is not going to be an overnight accomplishment. From what I’ve seen in just glancing through this book, it should be worth the money I spent on it. Again, stay tuned…

The books from Barnes and Noble are scheduled to arrive on Monday. They include How to Talk so Your Children Will Listen and Listen so Your Children Will Talk and Siblings Without Rivalry – both of which I’ve heard recommended time and time again. I look forward to receiving them as well.

Until then, know that I yearn to be sitting in a corner curled up with one of my new books. Keyword: yearn.

Happy day!

Ben seems to be one of those kids who benefits from having things thoroughly explained to him.

For instance, riding a bike. I swear he was having these raging tantrums back on the patio where all the neighbors could hear him and we were completely mortified. But the bike wasn’t doing what he thought it should do. I explained to him how you set the pedal so it’s just past the top and then you can push down and the pedals keep turning a little so the other pedal gets just past the top and you can push it down…and so forth. Soon after that, I went out to check on him and he was riding his bike around the patio perfectly. No more fits of rage.

So with potty training, we’ve been using a similar approach. Like when we hear him fart, we explain to him that pooping feels the same way. And so forth. [Please thank me for sparing you the details.]

Can I just say that in the past few days, we have had detailed discussions at our house about going to the bathroom that go far beyond anything I ever imagined I would ever discuss with anyone. Anyone.

Thank you. I feel better now.

I just finished moving my blog from Movable Type to WordPress. Please excuse the dust while I’m getting things back up to speed. And those of you who have linked to me (who knew I was so important???), my apologies for the dead links (I’m looking into it)…

Okay, if I had to pick one thing that was the problem with potty training Ben, it would be that he seems to have no clue when he has gone to the bathroom. He’ll sit on the potty and get up and I’ll happen to notice that he peed and I’m telling you, it’s news to him! And if he doesn’t know the sensation when he’s peeing or pooping, how on earth is he going to learn to control when he pees and poops?

So this morning he pooped in his pull-up. I cleaned him up and then had him sit on his potty while I cleaned up the bathroom and threw the dirty pull-up away. I was cleaning the house and had collected all of my dirt on the landing at the top of the stairs, which we needed to travel across in order for him to go back outside. So when I came in from throwing the dirty pull-up in the trash, I decided to go ahead and vacuum up “my dirt” too. I heard Ben holler something about going potty, but I just went on with what I was doing. I mean, he’s always going on about how ‘Joey goes tinkle in his diaper because he’s a baby and I go tinkle in the potty because I’m a big boy’ and such so I didn’t think much of it.

Well, when I went back up to the bathroom, lo and behold, not only had he gone tinkle in his potty, he knew that he had gone tinkle in the potty and was all proud of himself. We celebrated and he got to choose one of his toys to get down from the top of the freezer [they go up there when he isn’t playing with them nicely and he has to earn them back in various ways].

I’m not saying he’s potty trained yet. I’m just saying that perhaps he’s learned the sensation when he goes tinkle so he can learn to control when and where he does it. That’s all. Gotta keep it all in perspective, ya know.

Later on, Ben mentioned to me in a very serious tone of voice that “Farmers don’t wear underwear.” [Don’t ask – I have absolutely no clue where he got such an idea from.] I tried to tell him that yes, farmers do wear underwear, but he didn’t seem to want to take my word for it. So perhaps we’ll be making a trip up to the farm again soon to put this issue to rest once and for all. That portion of it, at least.

Onward!

Note which way the handlebars are facing…

Yeah, Ben has his own ideas about how things should be done, as illustrated above. And he is very set in his ways. Sometimes like cement – all mixed up and permanently set. Or so it seems.

And people wonder why he isn’t potty trained yet…as though I’m not trying hard enough…or even making any effort.

Now really, do you think I enjoy cleaning up poopy diapers from a three-year-old? Wet ones are bad enough; poopy ones are awful. He’ll know he’s poopy and he’ll just keep playing and it’ll get dried on his back and he’ll sit in his favorite chair and get poop on it (all of this occurs outside where I can hear him playing so I don’t necessarily run out and check on him every fifteen minutes to see if he’s pooped or anything).

My mom sent us this book she used to potty train my sister and me: Toilet Training in Less Than a Day. I’ve scanned through it, and we’ve done 90% of what they suggest in this book. The main things we haven’t done are having a doll that can go potty and who you praise excessively so he can see how the dolly has wet pants and dry pants – but he already understands that. He knows when he’s wet or stinky – he just doesn’t care to bother to do anything about it.

And then you’re supposed to do these concentrated sessions where you give them their favorite drinks like pop, juice, chocolate milk, etc….but our dear Ben refuses to drink anything but water. And you’re supposed to give them salty snacks to make them thirsty – things like potato chips, peanuts…they have a whole list of things, all of which he refuses to eat. He won’t even eat candy so that’s out of the question too. I’ve tried the concentrated sessions like that with things like promising him a story as a reward – he loves stories – but even stories weren’t motivation enough to do what he was supposed to do on the potty.

Oh, and they’re supposed to relax when they sit on the potty. When he sits on the potty – even for thirty seconds – he does all these contortions and moves the potty around and on and on. Believe me – you would be amazed at how many ways you might possibly sit on the potty once you’ve watched Ben for a few minutes. And you can’t pee or poop if you’re doing all sorts of contortions like that.

But I do have good news – a year ago when we went to Florida in May, when we saw the landrovers in the Mars exibit, Ben called them “kucks” which was his word for trucks at the time. Now he saws “trucks” clearly and correctly. Obviously all the money we’ve spent on those expensive speech therapy sessions has been worth it. Oh wait…we didn’t take him to speech therapy. And eventually, on his own time, he did figure it out.

In fact, when he turned three, I was still spoon-feeding him most of the time because he refused to feed himself. Shortly after that, I got fed up with it so I’d leave him in the room all by himself with a spoon and a bowl full of food and if he didn’t want to feed himself, he could just go hungry. Our pediatrician’s comment at his three-year check-up was that he needed some siblings so that I wouldn’t have so much time to wait on him. Well, we have Joey now, for what it’s worth.

But he still is not one of those children who wants to do things “by myself.” No, he’s perfectly happy for you to wait on him. In fact, the other day, we were in a hurry to leave for an appointment in town and I forgot that I hadn’t fed him lunch yet so I quickly got out a yogurt and fed it to him myself so I didn’t have to get his chair out, put a bib on him, wait while he slowly ate, and then clean up a big mess. I asked him as I was feeding him if he liked being fed like that – he smiled and said, “Yes.” He’s just so happy to be waited on…so of course he prefers having his diapers changed rather than having to pull his pants down and sit on the potty himself.

We’ve taken away his favorite toys when he’s had accidents and told him he couldn’t get them back until he used the potty….and they just sat up where we put them. He even asked about them often (though less and less), but he has yet to earn them back. He can explain to you how going potty works and tell you all about how mommy and daddy sit on the potty and what they do so it’s not like he doesn’t understand. He’s just dowright lazy – that’s all.

I’m sure eventually we’ll figure out some way to make it worth it to him to use the potty. There’s still hope. But for now, I have no idea how or when it’s going to happen.

Well, I finished the back of St. Brigid. [Pictures later.] The Charcoal Slogalong is done about up to the armholes in front. And because I’m tired of working on those two projects for now [I will be happy doing them when I come back to them…you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder sorta thing…], they shall be on hiatus for a while. [See, I’m not even interested in them enough at the moment to take pictures for you.]

What I am interested in, at the moment, is a cute little felted tote I want to use for my knitting projects. I’m using yarn from my stash – mostly. I had bought some Cascade 220 in these beautiful, bold, autumn colors to make some kind of tote but hadn’t decided exactly how to knit it up yet. I had four colors and I needed two more. I went to Threads to see what they had. Since I only had one skein of each color, theoretically any color could be the main color (which I needed two of). I ended up going with black, the white part in the picture will be a nice gold, and then the squares will be black, chocolate brown, maroon, dark teal blue, and hunter green. It will be so pretty! I love the colors they show the bag in too, so if it’s a fun project, I may make a second one at some point, though I have no idea what I would use it for now.

Then I have baby gifts to make. A little hat – the vine lace one from Knitting Daily. I think I have some pretty leftover yarn in my stash that would be perfect for that. I also have a sweater design in my head that I want to try out with some wool-cotton yarn also in my stash. And I have my second Monkey sock to make.

Such fun projects!

But, before I start any of them, I must finish up those UFO’s that have been sitting on my living room shelves for forever. I thought that leaving them out where I would see them and they would annoy me would motivate me to get them done. Then my plan was to finish one per week. To no avail. Part of why they were sitting there was because I wasn’t sure how I wanted to finish them. But the little sweater in yesterday’s post is probably the most difficult one, and all I have to do on it now is bury the ends, if indeed I decide I like it.

Then I have a felted tote I need to re-do the I-cord for because it didn’t felt nicely when I did it originally (it got knotted or something and was thick and thin instead of all one size). I have a little back-pack which needs straps and buttons sewn on. [I hate sewing buttons, remember?.] And I have more buttons and loops (or a zipper) to sew on that I-cord jacket I made for myself.

I decided I needed to block the I-cord jacket for myself since I really would prefer a zipper over buttons but I’m afraid the zipper would be too long or short once the thing stretched out from wearing and it would look funny. I soaked it in water and then spun it out in the washer, but the washer spun it out so much that it was no longer damp enough for me to shape it. The sweater rack I have is worthless – it is a piece of netted fabric on a frame – the netting does not keep its shape at all, so there is no hope for shaping a sweater on it. I should just trash the thing. My other method is to use the top of the dryer which gets used often and creates a nice warm place for knitted items to dry, and I guess I will be going back to that until I find a better contraption. Messing around…messing around. [Why do I hate finishing projects?]

The i-cord for the knitted bag is 36″ long at the moment – it needs to be 60″. Then I will wash it in a pillowcase with a pair of Steve’s old jeans. And I have the needle and thread out to sew the buttons and straps on that little back-pack. So really, I am making progress.

The moral of the story is that punishment – leaving things out where they will annoy me because I see them all the time – is clearly not as effective as rewards – getting to work on new fun projects once the old ones are complete. There are people these days who think you shouldn’t use either with your children – children should want to do things for the right reason (like bettering society) rather than avoiding punishment or earning reward. Personally, I think such ideas are hogwash, especially since I used rewards for myself a lot. Trully, the punishment or reward needs to match the desired action or it will not be effective…and it’s difficult enough making good choices for myself, much less for someone else (like my kids). Really, I would like to do good things just because I should, but more often than not, I need a bit more of an incentive than that, quite frankly. So I roll my eyes when people try to argue that you shouldn’t punish or reward your children. I mean, it works so well with me…

Okay. Enough ranting. On with my knitting. I really will post pictures soon. Promise.